Trust me, Republicans are not smart enough to organize a "Stop Obama From Talking to our Kids" movement. Bob Dole? John McCain? Candidates twenty years past their prime? Many of you are underestimating and misunderstanding the paranoia that is out there. You forgot that 50% of the people in this country don't vote. Also, there are very likely many more "independents" than either Republicans or Democrats. Brace yourself for more of this. Many and I mean many citizens feel their government is NOT LISTENING to them. In time of economic insecurity people get more interested in government. Government at all levels, but especially at the national level, is wasteful and arrogant. Usually, nobody cares, but when they do, interesting and even strange things can happen. More is on the way.
talk about reaching. please. there is really no defense here. I hope my kids get to watch his speech.
Interesting. Maybe I misheard (I believe an NPR broadcast) and they were talking about the first internet broadcast to students?
There’s alot of people here crying censorship, but if we are defenders of free speech, we have to allow Obama to say what he will. If his idea is to go before school children, perhaps we can counter his free speech with some of our own. For instance, while he’s up at the podium preeching about doing good in school for the sake of a good paying job as the reward after graduation, there might be a few students holding up signs that challange his rhetoric. Do you think there might be some backlash for Obama if some of the students at this school speech were holding up signs that read: “What good is earning a degree in engineering when you and the Congress are shipping engineering jobs overseas”? “Why study medicine, when politicians and corporations end up deciding how to treat patients ?” I think an auditorium filled with banners like this would be so much more effective than just boycotting his speech. His free speech vs our free speech occupying the same space, at the same time. Who do you believe would make the stronger statement?
I've been saying that for awhile, not using the same terms as you are, but that if Obama wanted healthcare reform passed he needed to take a page from the Bush playbook. Enforce party discipline and push a bill through.
The law as stated in the quote pretty much states that parents can remove their kids if they find something objectionable. Also I don't know what school district you went to but when I was a kid on a few occasions I left town with my family for my dad's work and was excused. Even missing up to two weeks at a time.
using kids as poltical devices. awesome. personally, I don't really have too many issues with Obama. cash4clunkers was about as dumb as it gets IMO....... however....I'm not going to channel any of my political feelings, good or bad, through my 15 year old and 7 year old child. Thats ****ing pathetic.
Considering Obama during the campaign used some protectionist rhetoric I would say that sign would be uninformed. But feel free to exercise your free speech as much as you want.
Really? <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WAOxY_nHdew&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WAOxY_nHdew&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
I was in Spring Branch Independent School District. But it was a state wide house bill that codified the amount of absences that could be had in one school year. If your public school didn't follow that, then you were very lucky. I loved almost all my years of schooling, but not being allowed to represent the U.S. at Kung Fu tournament and travel to China and Korea, still makes me bitter. The law in CA does not allow parents to remove their children unless they are going to home school them. But in that case they aren't just missing a few days, they are withdrawing from the school. We have a councilor at my school who's principle job it is to look into absences, and she works with the DA and custody is threatened when parents take their kids out of school for things like family trips, or other unexcused absences. It usually doesn't get that far unless it happens more than once or twice, but the law states that the children must attend school.
Not letting FB go to china in those circumstances is about the dumbest thing I've heard. Ugh. You'd think they could give you your lessons to keep up. How totally inflexible. I'm surprised California is the same. No wonder you're so often bitter I think a cage match with our local jadoka master might resolve your anger. My wife went to a school for athletes and performers (she was neither) and most of the student body fit their schooling around their crafts. I know a couple of kids in 'regular' schools who are competing in sports at a high level, and both miss weeks at a time. They're responsible to catch up -- but the school accomodates them. I missed about a month in each of 10th and 12th grade for travel. I think I had to do a presentation when I got back once -- but it wasn't a big deal. Of course none of this was in Texas or California. And this has nothing to do with taking a few hours out of one day to hear the President speak. About education no less. How can this possibly be less relivant to the school curiculum then the countless movies kids watch in many of their classes.
I'm not so sure that this opposition is mainly racial. It is not that much different than all the paranoid right wing stuff about Bill Clinton killing folks in Arkansas and the other lies about the Clintons. There is a group on the right encouraged or at least not opposed by mainstream GOP'ers who are "assholes" as Batman called them and they just refuse to accept the results of elections when the GOP loses. See their tactics with the Swift Boat liars for example. They are willing to engage in any amount of direct lying and they have a signifcant undereducatd group that will believe their lies and get worked up.
Yes they can do those things already. I used to live in South Central Los Angeles. There were far more examples of bad parenting there than anyplace else I've been. The number of teenage mothers was also very high. You might want to think twice before espousing some draconian population control laws. It may not target the people you think they would.
So you would favor taking the kids away from parents who prevent their kids from listening to Obama's speech? I assume you don't have kids. By re-education camps, I can only guess you are referring to detained terrorist suspects. Obama's "preventive detention" plan isn't exactly a great example of civil rights. Could it be that he got into the White house, was privy to some of the same intelligence that Bush was, and said "holy crap!".
That was the crazy thing. I never imagined that I would be denied the right to go. It was only when I went to the office with my parents to talk about getting all my lessons in advance that I would do before I even left that they told me I couldn't do it. I was so sure that it wouldn't be a problem that I thought I was going a little above and beyond trying to get my lessons early rather than make them up afterwards.
I hear this myth about Bush party discipline repeated a lot, and I get it. It is the perception, and the attitude of many Republicans (notably Cheney and Delay) of the past decade, but it's mostly just perception. Almost all of the major bills signed by Bush, from No Child Left Behind to the Patriot Act to the Afghan War authorization to Sarbanes-Oxley to McCain-Feingold to the Iraq War authorization to bankruptcy reform to the re-authorization of the Patriot Act to the first stimulus package, were supported by overwhelmingly bipartisan groups. In fact, there were basically two pieces of "game-changing" legislation that were passed on mostly partisan lines: Medicare Part D was a mostly partisan Republican issue (back then, Democrats still cared about deficits) and the bank bailout was a mostly partisan Democrat issue (at least in the House). Party discipline may have been enforced on budgets and minor bills, but ther was certainly less unity among Republicans during the Bush years than now. When we look back on it, the Bush era will be remembered as the largest bipartisan Federal power grab in history so far. It's an era of only a smattering of nominal opposition.
