The Teacher In Him

I think the issue isn’t with him teaching (although the case of being a bigot can be made of some of those who oppose his efforts to speak) but with his ability to speak intelligently AND be understood. Obama talks about what the actual relationships are as opposed to what the relationships are commonly thought to be. Banks have long held a large amount of sway in our country and now that they are proved to NOT be omnipotent, issues have arisen with who those responsible for our financial crisis… namely that they don’t want to be named or brought into the sunlight.

We don’t usually look to Tom Friedman to say exactly the right thing about a political issue. Appearing on Sunday’s Meet the Press, however, Friedman came right to the point about parents who are actually upset that the president is addressing school children.
“It’s flat out stupid,” said Friedman. “There’s no point in dancing around about it, it’s just flat out stupid.”
See Media Matters, approx. four minutes into the video. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200909060005

I love this picture. Whatever he is as a politician, I think Obama is a good man.

Friedman’s right. Sometimes, people really ARE stupid, and our fear of not being PC keeps us from citing that. Sometimes, the emperor really doesn’t have any clothes.
And, Molly? I love your statement. Very nice.

“This is how we roll!” exclaimed the president.
May I recommend another photo that just popped on the LA Times front page? A finer metaphor for public services in our budget-busted state I have not seen. (An individual link to the front-page photo has not yet been posted.
http://www.latimes.com/

A republican response to this photo:
I think he is going to punch that little girl…
(As Peggy Noonan says, it would be irresponsible not to speculate)

The saddest thing I heard during this whole thing was one man who said he wouldn’t let his neighbor speak to his kids alone, and he sure wasn’t going to let Obama talk to them without being there.
I feel sorry for those kids – apparently Daddy is terrified and he’s passed that on to his kids, that he doesn’t even trust his neighbors. It’s really sickening to me, what has happened to families in this country. Kids aren’t allowed out of their houses anymore. There is a park about 50 yards from my house, in full view of everyone on my street and my neighbor won’t let her kids, who are 9 and 11, play down there alone. In full view!
What the hell happened? I blame local news, which is nothing more than the Terrify Suburban Parents half hour.

Opposition to Obama’s education speech comes from the same source as the Death Panels, Obama born in Kenya, Obama as Hitler, Obama the Socialist/Communist/Nazi. And all the rest.
It is stupid. And I think it starts with a public school system that doesn’t offer a course in Critical Thinking. These people are strangers to critical thinking.

Too many people – we are crowded too close together, our personal space is being impinged on every day by other people forced into our space by the crowdedness of daily life. The tragedies are legion – suburban sprawl as people strive to build borders around themselves, interminable racket of TV-boom box-police emergency sirens in our daily lives. Substantial decline of churches as community builders, with no other such pervasive device – people went to church for the community even when they could not have cared a whit about what the preacher said. And yes, canned culture, leaving many with a deeply ingrained feeling of being insufficient.
Sadly, we have failed as a society to replace the glue that church has formed for so many cultures.
When people can’t breathe they panic. When they can’t figure out what to do, they panic. When they lose all sense of being in control of their personal space, they panic.

He’s a good daddy. One thing I noticed in video of the egg roll, is how sweet Sasha and Malia are. Bigger than the other kids, you could see that they deliberately held back in the “race”.

I love the way he’s there with the tiniest girl, cheering her to keep up the fight. too cute!