10/4/91 Washington TimesHouse Democrats criticized President Bush yesterday for using Education Department funds to produce and broadcast a speech that he made Tuesday at a Northwest Washington junior high school.
The Democratic critics accused Bush of turning government money for education to his own political use, namely, an ongoing effort to inoculate himself against their charges of inattention to domestic issues. The speech at Alice Deal Junior High School, broadcast live on radio and television, urged students to study hard, avoid drugs and turn in troublemakers.
"The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students," House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said. "And the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.' "
Two House committees demanded that the department explain the use of its funds for the speech, an explanation that Deputy Secretary David T. Kearns provided late in the day in a letter to Rep. William D. Ford (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. Education Secretary Lamar Alexander was out of town.
Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), chairwoman of the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, said it was outrageous for the White House to "start using precious dollars for campaigns" when "we are struggling for every silly dime we can get" for education programs.
Rep. Martin Frost (D-Tex.) said that if Bush feels obliged to use government funds to hire outside consultants "to make him look good," then he should fire some of the public relations experts on the White House payroll. "Then the president might be more sympathetic to unemployment benefits," Frost said, referring to Bush's threat to veto legislation to extend benefits.10/2/91 Baltimore Sun
Yesterday was one of those occasions White House image-makers love.They gave their boss the hated task of reading a prepared speech from Teleprompters but put him into one of his favorite places to do it — a small classroom.
Walking casually around the room as he spoke, President Bush gently exhorted 27 rapt eighth-graders — and pupils watching his televised performance throughout the nation — to take control of their own destinies by making sure they get the most out of school.
The effect was part bully pulpit, part campaign ad. Mr. Bush was simultaneously employing the power of his office in the drive to improve American education and making another bid to focus voter attention on what he considers the centerpiece of his domestic agenda.
09/7/09 Baltimore Sun
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a speech that drew fire even before he delivered it, President Barack Obama is telling the nation's schoolchildren he "expects great things from each of you."
"At the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world," Obama said. "And none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities."
[....]
Obama's planned talk has proven controversial, with several conservative organizations and individuals accusing him of trying to pitch his arguments too aggressively in a local-education setting. White House officials, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan, have said the allegations are silly. (Why is this not a shock? Bush=evil, Obama=glorious, even when they do the same thing.)
[....]
"Obama made no reference in his prepared remarks to the uproar surrounding his speech. Nor did he make an appeal for support of tough causes like health care reform. He used the talk to tell kids about his at-times clumsy ways as a child and to urge them to identify an area of interest, set goals and work hard to achieve them. (Yet when Bush did this it was a bully pulpit, a campaign ad...)
[....]
The president also warned students that if they quit on school, "you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country. (and Mein Fuhrer! Don't quit on your Faza-land!)
[....]
Duncan's department has also taken heat for proposed lesson plans distributed to accompany the speech.
On Sunday, the secretary acknowledged that a section about writing to the president on how students can help him meet education goals was poorly worded. It has been changed.
"We just clarified that to say write a letter about your own goals and what you're going to do to achieve those goals," Duncan said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
[....]
Los Angeles Times
09/5/2009Calls to boycott Obama's speech to kids offer a disturbing lesson in paranoia
Those who are whipping up hysteria over the president's address are playing a dangerous game with an unhinged segment of public opinion.
While it long ago crossed the borders of reason and civility, the hysteria over healthcare reform is -- at some level -- understandable, because wellness and infirmity are really just stand-ins for those most terrifying of issues, life and death.But there is no similar way to rationalize the bizarre controversy now raging over President Obama's plan to deliver a brief televised address on Tuesday to the nation's grammar school children.
According to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Obama will "challenge students to work hard, set educational goals and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens.
"Sounds innocuous. Who, after all, could be against good study habits, personal responsibility and productive lives? (Certainly not those who were whipping up hysteria over President Bush in the classroom...) As it turns out, quite a number of people who seem to believe that Obama intends to induct their children into -- well, it's not quite clear what they're afraid of. (The same thing YOU were afraid of when it was Bush). The Web and talk radio are abuzz with various attempts to organize a boycott of Tuesday's speech. One group is urging parents to demand that their children be excused from watching the president and be sent instead to the school library to read the Founding Fathers. (The theory, one supposes, is that a good dose of the Federalist Papers will inoculate the young against Obama's attempts to subvert the republic through good grades.)
On Wednesday, Fox News devoted a substantial portion of one of its prime-time newscasts to a discussion of whether Obama is, in fact, trying to seduce schoolchildren to some darkly obscure personal agenda. The sole guest, a spokesman for the libertarian Cato Institute, reported that "we've gotten a lot of calls from people asking, 'How do I keep my child from being indoctrinated?' " (Easy, teach them that liberalism is the disease of hyposrisy that it is...)
[....]
"It's hard to imagine anything more ridiculous than attacking the president of the United States for talking to students about the importance of getting a good education and being a good citizen," said Kathy Miller, president of a statewide school monitoring group. "I wish our elected leaders were responsible enough to denounce this kind of wild-eyed paranoia. But the problem is too many of them are actually feeding this kind of nonsense -- like when the governor flirts with secessionists and state Board of Education members say the president sympathizes with terrorists."
Miller has identified precisely the process at work in the healthcare hysteria and, increasingly, elsewhere where the GOP thinks it can shove the Obama administration into a ditch. (Because anyone against Mein Fuhrer's Reich is awful America haters, unlike when liberals were HATING Bush and carrying posters of him as Hilter-that was totaly okay.) Republican officials such as the Florida state chairman are playing a dangerous game with an unhinged segment of public opinion that regards Obama not as an elected official with whom they disagree, but as an illegitimate usurper of the presidency. (Right, because all the proof of Mickey Mouse and other cartoons and dead people registered to vote, as well as the polling places that had MORE VOTES than people REGISTERED to vote, and the fact that the FBI has stormed numerous ACORN offices to investigate and the ridiculous sway of MSM to help Obama proves he won legitimately....)
That paranoid fantasy is what's really behind the "birther" movement and the allegations that the president is -- take your pick -- a secret Marxist or a secret Muslim. (Not so much a fantasy, as his policies that are behind that...)
It's the kind of fanciful anxiety that produces comments like this, posted on a conservative website this week: "Barack Obama and his left-wing Chicago machine regime are putting into place laws and institutions which will insure that there will never again be free elections in America."
These are the people who are stockpiling ammunition and keeping their children at home next Tuesday.
The sickening hypocrisy of liberals is overwhleming. It is an embarrasing time to be a Democrat. If I were one, I would be SO ashamed of my own party. It just goes to show, they have no integrity, no shame and no intelligence. All of these idiots berating us for objecting to Obama's classroom speech are not smart enough to realize that we have this crazy little thing called the internet that allows us to go back in time and see their reactions in 1991....
Nothing like a good serving of what liberaly hypocrisy looks like to lighten up the day.
Logging you in...
Posts
