The Normal State Of Affairs

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Jones' experiences at Yale caused Lisa Schiffren to wonder about President Obama's experiences at Columbia and Harvard. We know, of course, that Barack Obama is brilliant, because everyone says so -- and he has a degree from Harvard Law School. But we know nothing about his actual education: what he studied, or how he did in his studies; what thinkers and writers (excepting Saul Alinksy) inspired him and shaped his world views. We see the credentials. What about the content? As a law student, it appears that Jones aspired to a career as a community activist. Obama's ambitions began there but extended considerably further. Thus, it's likely that Obama approached school rather differently than Jones did. Whether he learned more "content" is less clear. As John has noted, Obama appears to know little about history and less about economics. But that's been pretty normal state of affairs among students at elite institutions for many years now.

I Can Tell You What I Think

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com No doubt millions of people will be listening to the words of President Barack Obama Wednesday night when he makes a televised address to a joint session of Congress on his medical care plans. But, if they think that the words he says are what matters, they can be led into something much worse than being swindled out of their money. One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess-- for a program that would not take effect until 2013! Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years-- more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?

H/T Ray.

The Memory Hole (Part 89,935)

clipped from www.washingtonexaminer.com The controversy over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren will likely be over shortly after Obama speaks today at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush's speech -- they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue. With the Post article in hand, Democrats pounced. "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students," said Richard Gephardt, then the House Majority Leader. "And the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.'"

That Reactionary HHH

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com The defining accomplishment of Van Jones's life was his founding of the Ella Baker Freedom Center. While the controversy over his appointment was going on I meant to look into who she was, but didn't get it done. Ron Radosh, an expert on the hard left of which he was once a member, has the answer: [T]he name of Jones' Oakland group, The Ella Baker Freedom Center, is most appropriate. Most people have referred to the late Baker as simply a civil rights activist. I am writing from vacation in Nantucket, without benefit of my files at home. But in my book, Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964-1996, I point out that the late civil rights lawyer Joe Rauh had noted that everything Baker said in the 60's might as well have been taken verbatim from The Daily Worker, the Communist Party newspaper. Baker was so pro-Communist that she attacked Hubert Humphrey and other liberal anti-Communists as ultra reactionaries.

He Who Goes Borrowing

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China's green energy drive, said Beijing was dismayed by the Fed's recourse to "credit easing". "We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again," he said at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a policy gathering on Lake Como. "If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies," he said. China's reserves are more than – $2 trillion, the world's largest. "Gold is definitely an alternative, but when we buy, the price goes up. We have to do it carefully so as not to stimulate the markets," he added. "He who goes borrowing, goes sorrowing," said Mr Cheng. It was a quote from US founding father Benjamin Franklin.

Wow.

I'm Feeling Better

clipped from www.forbes.com There is nothing like data to kill a good story. Clearly, there is no evidence of recovery in this picture or that the stimulus has had any effect on consumption. As is well known and easily inferred, people have to rebuild their balances sheets and are saving more. The next picture shows the time path of investment in the same way. The last picture shows data for employment. The two previous recessions were not as severe and did not last as long as our most current decline. Evidently, the current recession will hit bottom much later than most of its predecessor’s. The severity of the downturn is evident in all of these pictures. So as not to be hoist with our own petard, we reiterate that the pictures tell us very little about whether the stimulus is working. Things could have looked even worse without it! we should take a lesson from the medical profession concerning cold remedies: They may not actually do anything, they just make us feel a little better.

Terrific

clipped from www.riehlworldview.com Terrific. So, Obama hires people to work on the taxpayer's dime with less scrutiny than your average gas station. But many, many officials, from relatively obscure advisers like Jones to the most powerful White House staffers, aren't confirmed by the Senate, and the suggestion that serious vetting didn't extend to Jones's level has raised some eyebrows from past White House officials. Did he complete the WH questionnaire? That would be No! Nah, Michelle likes them, or Obama likes them ... or some donor maybe likes them, just give them a job. What an irresponsible jack-ass this guys is. I guess he was too busy, off thinking of important ways to commune with the children, or something like that. Please, wake me from this nightmare, now. Van Jones, the Obama green jobs czar who resigned shortly after midnight Sunday, did not fill out the exhaustive questionnaire White House officials required of every Cabinet-level secretary and deputy-secretary position.

Ugghh

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Used to be, government jobs paid LESS than comparable civilian ones, balanced by lavish benefits. But now, it seems, gummint workers make A LOT MORE than comparable civilian workers, and STILL get the lavish benefits (including lush health care plans). Is the average Federal employee worth $30,000 a year more than the typical worker in the real world? (Chart from Clusterstock, taken from John Mauldin’s current weekly letter)

Not Any Crazier Than The Rest Of Us Looney Libs

clipped from justoneminute.typepad.com They loved him and left him - Firedoglake founder Jane Hamsher excoriates the cut-and-run liberals who loved Green Czar Van Jones when he was up but abandoned him in his moment of trial. I especially like her "He wasn't any crazier than the rest of us" defense: Now he's been thrown under the bus by the White House for signing his name to a petition expressing something that 35% of all Democrats believed as of 2007 -- that George Bush knew in advance about the attacks of 9/11.

The Default Function

clipped from market-ticker.denninger.net After a bit of prodding I decided to go back and expand a bit on the "Weekend Chart To Ponder" posting.  Just to reiterate for those who didn't catch this up front - these numbers are expressed as percentage changes and are all per-capita. First, there is a "critical level" beyond which all debts will default - without exception.  That point is where the carrying cost exceeds income.  For example, if you have a $100,000 mortgage and $9,999 (or less) in income, if the interest rate is 10% every such mortgage will default since you can't pay $10,000 with $9,999. Now let's think for a moment about the actual "default function"; that is, how outstanding debt compared to income actually results in defaults (or not) in a real system. Today we simply have no more "forward debt capacity" in our economy.  Attempting to use even more lending - that is, credit - to "pull us out" of this recession is not only doomed to fail it will drive the default equation closer to zero.

COTD: Unintended Consequences

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk Ambrose assumes rational thought & action by our leaders. He also has not taken into account the law of unintended consequences mixed in with events. It will be a mess. Just think what the following portends; 1)Russia is about to win large military contracts from Saudi ( USAs major ally in the Middle East is walking away; 2) Bank of Israel is no longer buying dollars (does it know the dollar is about to stumble); 3) China is encouraging it's citizens to buy gold & silver (USA control of the price of gold & silver will be prised off) and 4) China has stated that some of it's state owned enterprises can default on their derivitives (thereby potentially bring US Wall st banks to their knees. Not good news for the West as they stumble and fall

True Justice: A Doctor's Plan For Lawyers

clipped from online.wsj.com Since we are moving toward socialism with ObamaCare, the time has come to do the same with other professions—especially lawyers. Physician committees can decide whether lawyers are necessary in any given situation. At a town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., last month, our uninformed lawyer in chief suggested that we physicians would rather chop off a foot than manage diabetes since we would make more money doing surgery. Then President Obama compounded his attack by claiming a doctor's reimbursement is between "$30,000" and "$50,000" for such amputations! (Actually, such surgery costs only about $1,500.) Physicians have never been so insulted. Because of these affronts, I will gladly volunteer for the important duty of controlling and regulating lawyers. Since most of what lawyers do is repetitive boilerplate or pushing paper, physicians would have no problem dictating what is appropriate for attorneys. We physicians know much more about legal practice than lawyers do about medicine.

No Basic Understanding

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk Barack Obama is committing the same mistakes made by policymakers during the Great Depression, according to a new study endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan. His policies even have the potential to consign the US to a similar fate as Argentina, which suffered a painful and humiliating slide from first to Third World status last century, the paper says. There are "troubling similarities" between the US President's actions since taking office and those which in the 1930s sent the US and much of the world spiralling into the worst economic collapse in recorded history James Buchanan, who said: "We have learned some things from comparable experiences of the 1930s' Great Depression, perhaps enough to reduce the severity of the current contraction. But we have made no progress toward putting limits on political leaders, who act out their natural proclivities without any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work."

Seeing The World As It Is

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com The pollsters put the following question to 800 likely U.S. voters: Thinking about the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the Middle East, please tell me whether, in general, you consider yourself to be an Israel supporter, Palestinian supporter, or neither/undecided. 59 percent of the respondents said they were Israel supporters, compared to 8 percent who support the Palestinians. This represented something of a rebound in support for Israel; after Obama's Cairo speech, only 49 percent of respondents said they considered themselves Israel supporters.

Hillary: A Black Spot In Pants

clipped from pajamasmedia.com All of which is a long introduction to the revolutionary nature of Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard.  She’s religious and wears a head covering, but during the campaign she said that, while she thought women should cover their heads, if any women chose not to, that was fine with her. That sort of freedom strikes at the dark misogynistic heart of the Islamic Republic, as women in colors threaten dictators everywhere. And the failure to defend Iranian women is a very black spot on the honor of our three female secretaries of state, and of the so-called feminists, who for the most part have thrown in with the misogynists.  Why?  Because defending women’s freedom would have been “good for Bush,” and now would be “bad for Obama,” who famously swore to throw his support to school girls who wanted to wear a hijab to class.

Rejecting The Messiah And His Pal Billy

clipped from www.riehlworldview.com Here's all the misguided and weak liberal rationalization you'll need for the entire weekend. They're beginning to panic because the American people are rejecting their new messiah. As if that wasn't going to happen if he tried to convert America into some quasi-Marxist state. Somehow they believed Obama was going to be able to hide who he was during the election, but everything would be good if he could only win.  As if America wouldn't catch on to him. That's so foolish. These people are unrealistic to the max. The real clincher in this is that Obama would be the first guy to negotiate with genuine terrorists if he could. One of his best friends was one - Bill Ayers.

Temper, Temper Little Nazis

clipped from www.riehlworldview.com Oh my. Via Firedoglake we learn that Obama's WH cuts off the funding to liberal groups that criticize the one? And the liberal leaders Obama grabbed up for the WH are now more interested in dining on K Street, than perhaps attending the next Yearly Kos? Gee, that doesn't sound like the hope and change you voted for to me. Oh, this is going to get good. heh! Question: Did Kos sell out? Not even a mention of this on the front page? Hmm.  I heard it over and over again -- if you wanted to criticize the White House on financial issues, your institutional funding would dry up instantly. The Obama campaign successfully telegraphed to donors that they should cut off Fund for America, which famously led to its demise. It wasn't the last time something like that happened -- just ask those who were receiving institutional money who criticized the White House and saw their funding cut Temper temper little Nazis. Beck fragged your watermelon ( green outside but red to the core ) czar

Best Tag Of The Day Goes To Mickey: "Van, Bus Collide"

clipped from www.slate.com Van, Bus Collide: Always trust content from kausfiles, give or take 24 hours! ...P.S.: He signed a Truther petition. Bye. ... P.S.:  Where's the New York Times? Noah SIlverman notes: Readers of the print edition will never have heard of the presidential appointee so controversial the President had to dump him. Is this a milestone in the decline of the NYT? I've been waiting for the day when a prominent pol resigns and for print MSM readers it appears to be out-of-the-blue, though everyone on the Web knows the whole story.  But for WaPo's Franke-Ruta and Kornblut, this would be that case. ... In any case, more evidence that you can't find out whats going on by reading the Times. ... Backfill: Andy Levy. ... Update: It seems this may be just another installment of the NYT's running feature, "You Know That Guy You've Never Heard About? Well, He's Gone." ...[Tks to reader C.W.]

Heh.

Redux: Apparently It's Not "Paid Political Advertising" Any More...

clipped from newsbusters.org As Barack Obama prepares a nationwide broadcast to America's students next Tuesday, it has been revealed that Democrats complained in 1991 when then President George H. W. Bush broadcast a speech from a Northwest Washington junior high school. In fact, the House Majority leader at the time, Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), said "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students."

COTD: Votes From The Poor

clipped from thestar.com For your information 70% of American health care is paid for by the health-insured and the non-insured payers. The rest is medicare. In Ontario where I live, approximately 30 cents of my tax dollar goes to health care. In America you would have to be over 80, diabetic and suffering from cancer to pay that much for health insurance. Don't be so naive. We are paying big bucks out of our own pockets for mediocre health services. Our program is not compassionate democracy any more than theirs is. Obama just wants to bleed the higher wage earners to get votes from the poor. That's socialism my naive friend.

El Loser O

clipped from ibdeditorials.com Americas: The U.S. hit Honduras with harsh new sanctions last Thursday, slashing $30 million in aid. Nothing new, but the timing's strange, given that the rest of the world is starting to normalize ties with the tiny state. The June 28 ouster of Honduran President Mel Zelaya is rapidly shaping up as a never-ending crisis for the Obama administration. The more it tries to punish Honduras for getting rid of its would-be dictator, the more the freedom-loving Hondurans dig in to keep their democracy. Now it's pulled $30 million in aid and threatens to extend this crisis to forever by not recognizing Honduras' November elections. The U.S. says the aid cutbacks are meant to prod the Hondurans back to the bargaining table. But so far, the mediation of Costa Rica's respected president, Oscar Arias, has consisted of an intolerable proposal to bring back Zelaya.

O's Loony Lapdog

clipped from www.qando.net Frankly, I’ve seen enough of Olberman that I don’t want to know any more about him – but there are those who will differ, and dig. Does he really want to reduce his already miniscule TV presence to this? Trying to dig up dirt on another personality who apparently buries him in the ratings. How’d that work out with Bill O’Reilly? Tuesday we will expand this to the television audience and have a dedicated email address to accept leads, tips, contacts, on Beck, his radio producer Burguiere, and the chief of his tv enablers, Ailes (even though Ailes’ power was desperately undercut when he failed to pull off his phony “truce” push). This becomes necessary after this in order to prove various cliches about goose and gander, and to remind everybody to walk softly and carry a big popsicle, and most particularly to save this nation from the Oligarhy of The Stupid.

Across The Communist Spectrum

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com A reader writes, appropriately enough, from Belgrade, Serbia, to comment on "Van Jones goes down swinging." He writes: I had to chuckle when I read Van Jones's assertion that he "received encouragement from across the political spectrum to 'stay and fight.'" Yeah, right, from the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks and even the Trotskyites!

COTD: Please

clipped from hotair.com Ellison mentions that the US is 37th among industrialized countries for its health-care system Please. I’d love to see what went into the rankings. The US healthcare system is responsible for countless breakthoughs and advances over the years. People from those other 36 countries come here for treatment, they come here to study in our universities, they come here to work in our labs, hospitals and research centers. Our doctors also travel the world. I’d also add that many of those breakthroughs are the direct result of charitable contributions to places like The Dana Farber Institute (I mention that because it’s local, and the Jimmy Fund is one of only 3 charities I give to anymore). Gee, aren’t the Dems also trying to hamstring charities? I dislike these people.

And BTW, if you factor out deaths due to inner city violence and car crashes, we'd be #1 in life expectancies. The Dems clearly own the former -- they have governed the inner cities for decades -- and the latter is arguable a side-effect of geography and affluence. And it isn't the conservatives that want loose drunk driving laws...

Trojan Choice

clipped from hotair.com ESKOLA: Isn’t the public option really just a step towards the single payer that you want so much? REP. ELLISON: Yes but the reality is that for many people that’s not what it is. Rep. Jan Schakowsky has said the same thing on multiple occasions, so this is not exactly a smoking gun, or at least not the first. Better, though, are some of the other hilarious assertions Ellison makes in this clip. For instance: Ellison’s idea of “diversity” is having a teleconference comprising people who all believe the same thing. The progressive caucus “feels like we compromised” because they had to drop an explicitly single-payer bill for one Ellison admits is a Trojan horse for the same thing. Ellison lauds the same CBO scoring that shows that HR3200 will cost a fortune and drive up the deficit in both the near- and long-term. The health-care “exchanges” are just like the stock market or a farmer’s market, according to Ellison, and this is really ludicrous.

$20

clipped from dancleary.typepad.com

You go girl!

$483,000

clipped from online.wsj.com One way the Peterson Foundation wants to change that is to bring big numbers down to earth so people can comprehend them. "Our $56 trillion in unfunded obligations amount to $483,000 per household. That's 10 times the median household income—so it's as if everyone had a second or third mortgage on a house equal to 10 times their income but no house they can lay claim to." As for this year's likely deficit of $1.8 trillion, Mr. Walker suggests its size be conveyed thusly: "A deficit that large is $3.4 million a minute, $200 million an hour, $5 billion a day," he says. That does indeed put things into perspective. Despite an occasional detour into support for government intervention, Mr. Walker remains the Jeffersonian he grew up as in his native Virginia. "I view the Constitution with deep respect," he told me. "My ancestors and those of my wife fought and died in the Revolution, and I care a lot about returning us to the principles of the Founding Fathers."

Did I Forget To Tell You To RTWT?

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com Georg Ritter von Schonerer led the left-wing, anti-Semitic movement in Austria. Schonerer’s German Liberal Party, developed a lower-middle-class, anti-Semitic, anti-capitalistic platform in the 1880s. Schonerer directed his anti-Semitism at the economic activity of the Rothschilds; he advocated nationalization of their railroad assets. Later, he broadened his charges to attack Jewish merchants more generally. Hitler was an avid admirer of Schonerer, and as a young man even hung Schonerer’s slogans over his bed. The growing nineteenth-century socialist movements did little to stem the anti-Semitic tide and often explicitly promoted anti-Semitism. The initial link between socialism and anti-Semitism arose through intellectual affinity. Throughout the nineteenth century, the socialist critique of capitalism and the anti-Semitic critique used the same arguments. Many socialists considered anti-Semitism to be a way station on the path toward a more consistent socialist viewpoint.

Who Invented Anti-Semitism Again?

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com The New York Times' interviewer says that anti-Semitism was invented by the political right. This is simply absurd on too many levels. As for anti-Semitism, which is more specific than mere Jew hatred, it's simply not true to say that it was invented by the political right. It was invented by Wilhelm Marr, a German radical, atheist and leftist. Meanwhile, anti-Semitism as a political movement has its roots in the Left. Karl Marx, the quintessential self-hating Jew, was writing about the "Jewish Question" in what can only be called anti-Semitic (by today's usage) terms long before Hitler was born. Here's Tyler Cowen (no fan of my book, if memory serves): In the second half of the nineteenth century, Germany became the first country to develop systematic anti-Semitic political and intellectual movements. In Germany, Adolf Stocker’s Christian Social Party (1878-1885) combined anti-Semitism with left-wing, reformist legislation. The party attacked laissez-faire economics and the Jews

RTWT.

Inside Blowback

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com Powerline notices the evolution of Van the Truther's views. On September 13th 2001, as the towers still burned and the lampposts of lower Manhattan were plastered with flyers for missing loved ones, Van Jones spoke at a rally "against racism and war": A recurring theme of the speakers was the brutal violence committed by or supported by the United States government on a daily basis. "The bombs the government drops in Iraq are the bombs that blew up in New York City," said Van Jones Gotcha. Blowback. America had it coming. That was Van Jones in the fall of 2001. A couple of years later and suddenly it's the 9/11-was-an-inside-job routine. Traveling through the Middle East about six months after 9/11, I was struck by the number of Arabs, from Egypt to the Gulf, who simultaneously believed (a) the Mossad were behind the attacks and (b) it was a great victory for the Muslim world. Van Jones would seem to be an American variant of the same phenomenon

Steyn absolutely nails this one. RTWT. You'll shake your head with marvel about what we're facing. Insane children are running the assylum.

True Smears

clipped from www.qando.net The word “smear” has been debased by the left, just as “fascist”, “rationing“, and plenty of others. Their post-modernist, Red Queen, multiple truths, “I knew what I meant when I said it” worldview makes that a perfectly legitimate tactic as far as they are concerned. The word “smear” now means “saying something that makes a leftist look bad” regardless of whether that something is true.

The Timeline ... And Much More...

clipped from michellemalkin.com The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz also disseminated that distortion. Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard corrected the record last month for the clueless MSM. They persist in ignoring the truth: Howard Kurtz on Sunday accused Fox News’s Glenn Beck of attacking White House “green czar” Van Jones in response to the advertiser boycott implemented by Color of Change, an advocacy group founded by Jones. Such a conclusion seems to stem from all the time Beck spent on his program last week chronicling Jones’s activities as well as his background. What Kurtz conveniently ignored in this installment of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” was that Beck did two reports on Jones prior to the start of Color of Change’s campaign to get companies to end their sponsorship of Beck. Ironically, this came as Kurtz chided Beck for not sharing all the facts with his viewers… …Well, here’s a little detail Kurtz neglected to mention: Beck discussed Van Jones’s radical background on July 23 –

RTWT.

All The President's Czars So Far...

clipped from www.politico.com Afghanistan Czar: Richard Holbrooke AIDS Czar: Jeffrey Crowley Auto recovery Czar: Ed Montgomery Border Czar: Alan Bersin California Water Czar: David J. Hayes Car Czar: Ron Bloom Central Region Czar: Dennis Ross Domestic Violence Czar: Lynn Rosenthal Drug Czar: Gil Kerlikowske Economic Czar: Paul Volcker Energy and Environment Czar: Carol Brower Faith-Based Czar: Joshua DuBois Great Lakes Czar: Cameron Davis Green Jobs Czar: Van Jones Guantanamo Closure Czar: Daniel Fried Health Czar: Nancy-Ann DeParle Information Czar: Vivek Kundra International Climate Czar: Todd Stern Intelligence Czar: Dennis Blair Mideast Peace Czar: George Mitchell Pay Czar: Kenneth Feinberg Regulatory Czar: Cass Sunstein Science Czar: John Holdren Stimulus Accountability Czar: Earl Devaney Sudan Czar: J. Scott Gration TARP Czar: Herb Allison Terrorism Czar: John Brennan Technology Czar: Aneesh Chopra Urban Affairs Czar: Adolfo Carrion Jr. Weapons Czar: Ashton Carter WMD Policy Czar: Gary Samore

... minus one. I'm betting the others stay. After some sterilants in the Red State's drinking water there'll be nobody left to object.

Memory Hole Update: And Note That Media Matters...

clipped from mediamatters.org George H.W. Bush: Encouraged "America's students to strive for excellence." While president, George H.W. Bush gave a speech to schoolchildren intended "to motivate America's students to strive for excellence; to increase students' as well as parents' responsibility/accountability; and to promote students' and parents' awareness of the educational challenge we face." According to The Washington Post, the "White House sent letters to schools across the nation to encourage teachers and principals to allow students to tune in the speech, which was also carried live by the Mutual Broadcasting and NBC Radio Network. The live television and radio coverage was arranged at the request of the Education Department." [Washington Post, 10/2/91]

... conveniently forgets to note the Dems complaints at the time. We are left to wonder why such a great idea didn't become an annual tradition. Heh.

The Dems Didn't Complain /sarc

clipped from www.cbsnews.com Previous presidents have given national speeches in schools. In October 1991, President George H.W. Bush gave a nationally televised speech to students at Alice Deal Junior High School in the District, encouraging them to study hard and avoid drugs. At the time, House Democrats criticized the speech for having political motivations. Many critics focused their concerns on suggested classroom activities, which appeared to solicit support for Obama. In response, the Education Department changed one proposal from having children write letters to themselves about "what they could do to help the president" to writing about "how they can achieve their short-term and long-term educational goals."

So of course it became an annual Presidential tradition to address the nation's students ... no, wait...