About that Pres. Obama Speech to Students…

This was what the fuss was all about??? Really? People need to get a life. Who wouldn’t want their president to encourage their children to do well in school?

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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.

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SMH

Donna Brazile — "I’m Not Going to the Back of the Bus!"

Donna Brazile is one brilliant woman. I love watching her on CNN. Last weekend she gave an incredible speech about the election and race at The New Yorker festival. She hosted a panel called “If I We’re Running This Campaign”. Here’s the video clip.

Ludacris, You’re Really Not Helping….

I haven’t posted much in the last couple of weeks due my 9-to-5. But now things at work have slowed down a bit and I can get back to the business of blogging. Where do I begin…….

Luda, Luda, Luda!! Bro you are really not helping the O-man’s race to the White House. They lyrics to your new song “Politics” calling Miss Hillary a bitch….wrong move. And now the Obama Campaign has had to publicly denounce you. There goes that invitation to the Inauguration. I understand your excitement at the prospect of having the first Black President and a President that counts you as one of his favorite rappers. But Obama is playing for keeps, this isn’t some manufactured, YouTube hip-hop beef. You can’t just talk *ish about the opponent and move on. There are some very narrow-minded, dim-witted people who don’t have the ability to distinguish between the candidate and his supporters. People like that will take these lyrics use them against Obama as if he wrote them.

Obama is trying to obtain the highest office in the land. And in order to get there he’s going to have assure a lot of white people that it is okay to have a black President and that they don’t have to fear a bunch of big Negroes in white tees and cornrows won’t come to their door and throw them out the country.

However, as a hip-hop fan and a fan of yours, the song is hot! When are you releasing it?

An Open Letter to "Miss Scarlett"

Dear Miss Scarlett:

Shady doesn’t even begin to describe your actions today. For the last few months I’ve worked as the main writer for a project you lead. Each step in the writing process — from outline to first draft, I’ve adhered to your suggestions without question. The way the document flows has come from your edits. And each time you’ve changed your mind about how things should be organized. Some of your suggestions didn’t make sense, but I tried to work with it, because I figured you knew what was best for our readers. However, now that the final draft has been released, you changed your mind once again and again, I will comply. But this time you threw shade in my direction by complaining to the Bossman about my work. Of course you leave out details of your complicity in the end product. But don’t worry I let Bossman know what’s up. I also understand he corrected you on a few things that you assumed were to be done. Now I am not arrogant enough to say that I’m the best at what I do — and I agree that the document could have used more copyediting– but I do know my job and I am good at what I do.

What bothers me the most about your actions is that you didn’t even come to me first about your concerns so that I could clear up your misconceptions and possibly work out in kinks in the process. No you decided to try and call me out and make me look incompetent. That’s cool, Bossman was not impressed by your neurotic nitpicking. If was a different kind of negress, you would have heard a few things from me unbecoming a lady. But Rubylena taught me how to be a good corporate negress and play the game. So yeah, I came to you all smiling and expressing concern about your “issues”. But know this Miss Scarlett, it AIN’T ALL GOOD. And so I will keep smiling but all the while I’ll be singing the words written by my man Ice Cube.

Hillary Puts the Final Nail in the Coffin

Hillary Clinton essentially ended her campaign today and ruined any chance she had of becoming VP by invoking Robert Kennedy’s assassination to defend her decision to stay in the race. Speaking to the editorial board of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader about calls to drop out of the race, Miss Hillary said:

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don’t understand it.”

Now no one believes Miss Hillary is hoping something bad will happen to Barack Obama (like assassination) so she can win the Democratic nomination, but referring to assassinations with a Black man running for President is in really bad taste. And in light of Ted Kennedy recently being diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, and June being the 40th anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s assassination, Miss Hillary really put her foot in it.

The so-called apology:

“I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever.”
What about Barack Obama??? I notice he isn’t mentioned in this non-apology apology. So Miss Hillary didn’t mean to offend the Kennedy family, but Obama on the other hand….

But leave it to MSNBC’s Keith Olberman to put the verbal smackdown on Miss Hillary. His special comment tonight was blistering to say the least.

Where’s the Media Coverage of Rev. John Hagee’s Comments?

Comments John McCain’s pastor John Hagee’s made in a sermon from the 1990s about Adolph Hitler “doing God’s will” have recently come to light. However, this story does not seem to be getting a lot of play in the mainstream media. The Huffington Post and Keith Olberman and Dan Abrams of MSNBC have covered it, but these comments do not seem to be getting the media saturation that Barack Obama’s former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright received. Double standard? Hmm…. Here’s the audio of the comments posted on YouTube.

Pepperidge Farm Interracial Cookie Ad

I saw this posted over at the MoKelly Report. Pepperidge Farm has a new print ad for their Milano Cookies. The chocolate is portrayed as a woman (a black woman) and the light golden cookie is the man (a white man). Mo seems to think there some deeper racial meaning to it.

The ‘dark chocolate character’ seems to be female in nature…made to look like ‘she’ has long hair (or a weave) and long flowing ‘dress.’ That and the fact ‘she’ is shorter than her ‘White’ (or Asian or Latino) counterpart.

Let’s delve further…

Is the intimation ALSO that this ‘Black woman’ is the meat in a ‘White man sandwich?!’ (Note the caption below the logo…)

“Every taste has a feeling.”

Mo’Kelly is just sayin’…look at the cookie to the left too. Two White/Asian/Latino men “book-ending/sandwich breading a Sista…

Hmmm…

And what about the more ‘subtle’ racism…yes Mo’Kelly said racism.

The attribution of those things being “bold” because they are dark and ” light golden” tread dangerously close to the implied good/evil & white/black connotations of old……

I personally think its kinda funny — making sexual and racial references for a cookie. I wonder if we’ll see a similar ad for the Oreo cookie. Can you imagine?? Two dark brothas sandwiching a blonde chick….

Pepperidge Farm Interracial Cookie Ad

I saw this posted over at the MoKelly Report. Pepperidge Farm has a new print ad for their Milano Cookies. The chocolate is portrayed as a woman (a black woman) and the light golden cookie is the man (a white man). Mo seems to think there some deeper racial meaning to it.

The ‘dark chocolate character’ seems to be female in nature…made to look like ‘she’ has long hair (or a weave) and long flowing ‘dress.’ That and the fact ‘she’ is shorter than her ‘White’ (or Asian or Latino) counterpart.

Let’s delve further…

Is the intimation ALSO that this ‘Black woman’ is the meat in a ‘White man sandwich?!’ (Note the caption below the logo…)

“Every taste has a feeling.”

Mo’Kelly is just sayin’…look at the cookie to the left too. Two White/Asian/Latino men “book-ending/sandwich breading a Sista…

Hmmm…

And what about the more ‘subtle’ racism…yes Mo’Kelly said racism.

The attribution of those things being “bold” because they are dark and ” light golden” tread dangerously close to the implied good/evil & white/black connotations of old……

I personally think its kinda funny — making sexual and racial references for a cookie. I wonder if we’ll see a similar ad for the Oreo cookie. Can you imagine?? Two dark brothas sandwiching a blonde chick….

Today’s Bitchassness Award Goes To……

Bob Johnson

Hillary Clinton’s personal lawn jockey co-signs on Geraldine Ferraro’s ridiculous remark that Barack Obama wouldn’t be a presidential candidate if he were white.

“What I believe Geraldine Ferraro meant is that if you take a freshman senator from Illinois called ‘Jerry Smith’ and he says I’m going to run for president, would he start off with 90 percent of the black vote?” Johnson said. “And the answer is, probably not.”

“Geraldine Ferraro said it right,” Johnson added. “The problem is, Geraldine Ferraro is white. This campaign has such a hair-trigger on anything racial it is almost impossible for anybody to say anything. (source)

Really, Bob…’a hair trigger on anything racial’? Sen. Obama never made a race an issue in this campaign until your girl and her Bubba started playing it up during the SC primary. Additionally Ms. Ferraro’s comments questioned Sen. Obama’s experience saying “I’m not saying he isn’t qualified, never did I say that. He is very smart. He has experience issues, but if George Bush can learn to run the country, so can this guy.”

Who says George Bush has yet learned to run the country??? And unlike Bush, Obama is actually intelligent, he READS, he has more knowledge on foreign affairs than Bush has NOW! And really, since when did being first lady and a senator immediately means someone is more qualified to be president. Bob, stick to buying crappy basketball teams and producing coontastic movies like “Who’s Your Caddy”. We know how much you love uplifting your people.

Here’s your award. You got some Bitchassness in you.

From ‘Elitist’ to ‘Boy’

While the mainstream media continues to focus on Barack Obama’s so-called offensive “bitter” remarks, almost no one is talking about a really offensive remark made about Sen. Obama by a Kentucky congressman.

While speaking to donors at a fundraiser in Kentucky, Rep. Geoff Davis said about Obama, “That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button.”(source)

Did he really just call Barack Obama a BOY? I mean really, REALLY! It’s 2008. Does this Geoff Davis guy still think its 1948? Davis has since apologized and written a letter asking for Sen. Obama’s forgiveness (read it here).

And while every so-called political pundit from Lou Dobbs to Pat Buchanan makes mountains out of molehills over “BITTER-GATE”, not one has expressed outrage over this truly offensive comment.