It’s interesting you call sticking to the facts nit picking.
I agree they should be smart in their approach but once again, they won’t stop those looking through every word uttered to find something to twist around. You’re suggesting they be on the defensive. I’m suggesting they fight back in other ways and stop letting the opposition dictate the game.
If they wanted to covertly collect email addresses and other personal information they could pretty easily. It’s the suggestion that they wanted average citizens to inform on their neighbors to some government agency for some malicious fascist reason that needs to be treated with disdain.
They stated their reasons was to answer questions and concerns and keep the public informed. To dwell on and answer to ridiculous charges only gives those lies traction. You’re suggesting they take extra time and effort to trash email addresses and announce it. What do you suppose the opposition will say? All the time they spend defending themselves against BS accusations benefits the opposition.
IMHO it’s much better to treat those lies with the disdain they deserve. “we’re not targeting or tracking average citizens who happen to disagree with us. That suggestion is a political ploy that takes time away from serious issues. We’re attempting to offer answers to questions and concerns and fight the fear mongers with facts. We celebrate our democracy and welcome the participation of those who disagree with us.” and then move on to serious matters.
They’ll claim he changed it because of their protests. They’ve saved us from fascism again.
Concerning helping them. I’m referring to the poster in this thread who claims to be an Obama supporter while repeating the rights misinformation as if it’s factual.
While we are all pretty good with our PC skills on this board, I can promise you that the average Joe out there, who is getting email forwards is not as technically astute. Ask him to wipe out the emails in a forwarded chain and odds are that he would end up sending a blank email.
You’ll notice, as I have, that intention makes unequivocable statements, but doesn’t provide cites to back up those statements. Instead, intention challenges you to prove his statement for him.
How about a cite there, intention? While you’re at it, try to find one that includes your quote in context of the entire sentence and thought. There might even be a video out there with the entire context. Come on, intention, why should we do your work for you? Someone might actually think that its lazy debating to expect others to provide your own cites.
The address was intended for children, and was written to that level, I’m sure. After giving a speech centered entirely on staying in school and encouraging others to not drop out, “How can you help the President?” is on a par with hearing a speech about not doing drugs and being asked, “How can you help McGruff the Crime Dog?”
Anybody hearing the presentation would know precisely the message intended, in spite of one of out of context request to “help the president.”
Those who are making hay over that one phrase -insisiting on some sort of indoctrination going on - as well as poster **intention **(who either buys the theory or is advancing it through some torture devil’s advocate position) are doing nothing but feeding this ridiculous paranoia.
I swear, I never thought I’d see so much petulant, idiotic bullshit over a president’s address to school children.
Edit to add: I posted this after reading page one – got a little ahead of myself. I’m not sure if any of these points have already been made or refuted in this thread … sorry about that.
But that was in a speech in response to the hysterical paranoid fuss that was already being made about the abovementioned suggestion in the website. It doesn’t at all justify the hysterical paranoid fuss happening in the first place.
Here’s the timeline, just to clear it up for you:
White House blog site says they’re collecting instances of “fishy” “disinformation” on health insurance reform, so if you encounter such an instance in an email or website, you should “send it” to them.
Paranoid hysterical freak-out about how this means that Obama is nefariously compiling an enemies list of names and email addresses of people who oppose his health insurance reform plans.
The freaker-outers prolong the hysteria by saying “See, look, he explicitly says he wants you to forward him emails from people who disagree with them! Americans are being asked to inform on their neighbors! Oh noes!!!11!!!”
Sheesh. I’ve already noted that I think the White House should do a more careful job of phrasing their statements very unambiguously, to avoid upsetting the hyper-delicate reactions of the freaker-outers. But that doesn’t mean that the freaker-outers aren’t misinterpreting and overreacting.
Only in a paranoid, twisted, alternate-timeline world can people take a statement like “if you get an email from somebody that says something fishy, forward us the email and we’ll answer the question,” and hear “we’re going to hunt down our enemies, raid their houses in the middle of the night, and haul them and their families off to reeducation camps.” Only in the same world would a question phrased “How can you help the President?” poised after a speech about staying in school and working hard can be seen as the first step into Stepforddom.
Truly, there is no talking to these people, for they do not inhabit the same reality.
Not just people but neighbors, you know, GOOD people who live right next to you in Pleasantville USA, who through no fault of their own, are spreading lies and disinformation which also happen to be in America’s best interest!
It is very important that these purveyors of lies always be referred to as neighbors, or else some might get the impression that Republicans are using lies and disinformation to defend the profits of the party’s predatory corporate sponsors.
Ugh. It’s like talking to a brick wall. Let’s try to be realistic about this. The lesson plan created to follow the speech. It wouldn’t make sense to engage in the lesson prior to the speech, would it? It’s clear from the lesson plan that it’s meant to inspire discussion about the topic of the speech. In other words, when the children were asked how they can “help the president” there would be context. Reasonable people realized that the context of the lesson plan was already what was presented by the White House, that the topic was going to be about educational excellence, personal responsibility, yada yada yada. Unreasonable people, who seem to think Obama is the bogeyman, said that he was attempting to indoctrinate the children without any regard to the stated subject of the speech. To be sure, there is nothing AT ALL in either of the lesson plans that in the same zip code as ideology and political bias. It was all based supposition and scare tactics. There was never any need to specify what “helping the president” means because it was intended to allow the child to come up with his/her own ideas of what helping means. What exactly would you expect a kindergartener or sixth grader even to say to that question? Are they not entitled to view varying points of view? Do we not want them to think critically and independently?
Tell me what is the worst case scenario of asking elementary school children how they can help the president? Back in my school days, hearing the president speak was exciting and honorable (and my parents despised and vehemently disagreed with Reagan). Yet, he was given the respect the office did (and should) afford him.
And if you had been suspicious if Bush made the request in the same context that is being suggested by the teachers who wrote the lesson plan for Obama’s speech, I would have said that you’re being ridiculous. Sorry, but yeah, it makes you look a little bit paranoid.
Even I (the bed-wetting liberal I apparently must be) wouldn’t expect Bush to tell kids that we should bomb those nasty terrorists to hell and back and, by the way, how do you think *you *can you help me stamp out terrorism, children?
So what. That’s not at issue here. The president is making a speech on education, the DOE rightly anticipates that this can be a teachable moment, and releases an optional lesson plan created by public school teachers as a extended resource on the speech. By provided additional resources to schools, they are keeping within their stated mission to:
They are not “directing” anything. They are providing an optional resource. It’s especially relevant that the resource they are providing was not produced by Obama or government officials, but by actual working public school teachers who were selected to assist the DOE to:
Scary, ain’t it?
Well, I guess it stands to reason that simple public school teachers don’t see their lesson plans through the cynical, Socialist-fearing, Obama-is-Hitler crowd. That oughta teach 'em. Only a fool would give any credence whatsoever to this particular brand of idiocy.
Well, as long as you aren’t going to ignore the fact that Obama didn’t actually write the plans…hey, incidentally, what are your teaching credentials? Is it your professional opinion that the lesson plans were poorly composed? How much experience do you have writing lesson plans? What does a good lesson plan focused on a presidential speech look like?
Right, because they weren’t paying attention when it the speech was presented as being about educational excellence and personal responsibility. Tell me, what exactly did people expect him to say to the children in his speech?
Yes, anything the president does is evidently fertile ground for people who don’t trust the president to pull ridiculous supposition out of their ass and make a big deal out of something presidents have been doing for at least the last 20 years. There’s always going to be crazy people making silly suggestions, but that simple fact of their existence doesn’t give credence to the silly suggestions.
What’s the litany? How about waiting to see the speech before freaking out about imagined attempts to indoctrinate? It’s okay to wonder what types of things the plan is referring to here:
I will grant that it would have made more sense to release the text of the speech concurrently with the lesson plans. That way, teachers could more easily create and/or adapt their plans to the speech and parents could discuss what parts of the speech didn’t align with their values and react accordingly to, you know, reality rather than imagined potential slights.
Transparency is always better, IMHO, and I do think that Obama could do a considerably better job upholding this ideal. I probably shouldn’t add, though, that my cynicism prevents me from believing that it wouldn’t have changed much for the wingnuts; they *still *would have found something to be outraged about.
It’s depressing to me that it’s depressing to you that you teachers are even in this day encouraging a general respect the office of the presidency and inspiring the desire to be actively a part of the process as opposed to questioning every single instance of a president’s connection to the very people he serves. I guess the fact that I remember growing up in a time when even though I knew my parents didn’t like or agree with Reagan, he was still the president and that’s an important job. I also grew up being exposed to viewpoints that my parents didn’t agree with and it was up to me to think critically and sort out how I felt about those viewpoints. To this day, I don’t agree with everything my parents believe, but I do appreciate the fact that they were courageous and intelligent enough to allow me to develop my own values and ideals.
I find it sad that so many people are afraid to let their children explore ideas that don’t conform to their own worldview, frankly.
If you want my opinion, they changed it out of misplaced compromise. I don’t see anything wrong with it in its prior incarnation and I don’t see anything wrong with it now. If someone decides to inject something into the lesson plan that clearly isn’t there based on political bias or because they are afraid the other guys might be right, that’s their problem. I say, leave them behind to their bias and move on. I believe it is a mistake to kowtow to the Chicken Littles of the anti-Obama crowd. You don’t seem to think so, so I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Oh boohoo, I misinterpreted you and placed quotes around it. If it makes you feel any better, I misquoted you. It wasn’t a “tactic” it was a mistake and poor debate. I apologized. Get over it.
Gee, he suggest kids write him a letter. To help him and other unspecified individuals achieve their goals. I wonder what he was talking about. One could suppose he was asking for help achieving his goal of working with community organizations (gasp!) to better America, or perhaps he was looking for help pushing NAFTA through. Or maybe, just maybe, he was asking for help achieving the education goals he spelled out in his speech (full text here). He didn’t say those specific goals were the ones he wanted to hear about and as any politician does, he had many goals, but when you look at the context of the statement, it’s much clearer. Isn’t context amazing like that?
I guess if you don’t, I can’t help you either.
When age addles your memory, isn’t necessarily an advantage. Have you recently watched the speech? If not, you may not remember that following his speech, there was a question and answer format during which a student asked:
Now, if you don’t see what obvious, I’ll spell it out for you. That is a policy question that has nothing to do with educational policy. The student is asking Reagan about tax policy. It is clearly an invitation to President Reagan to discuss something other than education. Was it a teaching moment? To be sure. Did the Reagan administration provide materials to critically discuss this Reagan’s economic theory and was it presented as theory by any lesson plan? Who knows.
In fact, the question and answer portion of the speech covered many topics that had nothing to do with education such as Social Security, farm subsidies and nuclear (nukular?) disarmament, to name but a few. He hardly talked about educational excellence at all, actually. He simply encouraged kids to stay in school, get a diploma and “just say no” to drugs. (Full text here.)
Here we come around to your claim that Reagan’s speech was “billed as being about the importance of education.” So, I guess I’m going to have to ask you for a cite, given the fact that the question and answer format clearly provided President Reagan with the opportunity to expound upon his many political policies (from which his educational policy was notably absent, I might add, other than appointing a commission to come up with salary scales for teachers) and his prepared statement included only a single blurb about staying in school and getting a diploma.
In fact, if you compare of Obama’s speech to Reagan’s speech, it seems a little disingenuous to refer to Reagan’s speech as focusing on the importance of education, but not so much in regards to Obama’s speech.
Why not call it what it is? Why give credence to something that is not based in reality at all? People have concerns that the government is planting chips in people’s brains and that aliens are abducting them from their beds, but we don’t give credence to those “concerns” either. Why should we? It’s crazy talk. Just like the talk of Obama indoctrination. Neither has any basis in reality.
Lack of clarity? You asked me for a cite for something I never said. I’m not sure why I should be expected to cite your flights of fancy? I spoke of nothing more than a “time-honored tradition” of presidential addresses to school children. I don’t know what you’re on about.
Ironically, I doubt the people you characterize as suspicious of Obama would claim that Reagan went “off the rails” in his speech. But since you clearly can’t differentiate a discussion on policy from a speech about education, nor can you differentiate a mandate from an optional resource, I’m not sure we can help you out of your devil’s advocate position. I guess you’re just gonna have to be content justifying the craziness on the right. With friends like you, I can’t see how Obama actually needs enemies.
Well, from what I’ve seen the interview and that’s not what I heard Mr. Duncan say. I guess it’s just typical for you to misrepresent what people say. Mr. Duncan never stated that “people were ‘silly’ to be concerned.” Mr. Duncan stated that it was silly to keep children out of school given that they could go to school and not watch an 18-minute speech. The takeaway for me is: what is the wisdom of denying your child an entire day’s education due to an 18-minute speech about personal responsibility in education? Notice how I didn’t call people stupid, while questioning the wisdom of requiring kids to miss school over a speech? Nope, you probably missed that too.
I’m not sure the actual speech as given is an evidence either way anymore. You know he had teams of people pouring over it to make sure there wasn’t anything that could be construed in a negative manner. In all likelyhood, there didn’t need to be any changes, but you know they still went over it with a fine tooth comb.
Letting anything controversial slip in after all the fuss would have been politically dumb as you can get.
The only reason it sounds like something out of North Korea is because some talking head compared it to something coming out of North Korea and some idiots latched on to it.
Isn’t the only reason people were confused into believing in death panels because they were being lied to? Why is the American public so susceptible to lies from the right, especially given the right’s record of lying to the public?
I love how one side’s lies becomes both sides idiocy.
Yeah, the problem is that while they disagree, they mostly do so quietly. The face of Christianity in this country right now is frothing at the mouth and decidedly Republican.
Now I see the point you are trying to make and its a valid point but I would suggest to you that we are NEVER going to swing those people over into sanity. They are lost to us until they have an epiphany. If we are in fact fighting over the reasonable folks in the middle and not trying to convince the whackos, then why is it such a bad idea to point out how whacked out the whackos are?
Undoubtedly the speech was gone through with a fine tooth comb. Ruckus or no over the speech that is just what they do. It’s SOP for politicians (usually…when they ad lib is when they tend to get in trouble).
But I seriously doubt the original speech was more like:
*"[Obama puts on hypnotic glassed with the spiral painted on them that starts spinning]
Look into my eyes! You are all Obamabots now! Write me a letter that has all your lunch money in it and tell me if your parents say anything bad about me. If you don’t I’ll send people to come and get you! Your parents are mean! I love you way more than they ever will!"*
Seriously, no matter what he said I cannot imagine anyone becoming indoctrinated to anything. I am no expert but my layman’s understanding is indoctrination is a prolonged effort and not achieved in a five minute speech.
Well, I was agnostic on Bush until 2002/2003. Then he said and did stuff to make me not trust him. After that, if Bush told me the sun was coming out tomorrow I would have checked to see if there was an eclipse. I can’t identify a similar set of lies from Obama. I can’t identify anything he has done so fdar that he did not say he was going to do while he was campaigning. In fact I would suggest there is a BUNCH of stuff he said he was going to do that he DIDN’T do.
I would suggest that the vast majority of the current disonctent has to do with the fact that Obama has had 6 months to turn around the biggest recession in 80 years (and that one took decades to crawl out of) and has only managed to slow our freefall into mad max world into a recession.
So you agree that the President said that people should forward the emails, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because (as you keep claiming) the White House didn’t want us to forward the emails? Obama’s mistaken? Is that the claim? I’m confused here … and apparently, so is the President.
If the President is confused about what’s being asked by his own White House, isn’t it quite reasonable that other people would be confused too? Doesn’t that mean the the President is “misinterpreting”, as you say above, what the Administration is asking?
And since even the President is “misinterpreting” what the WH said, then is it not reasonable that the people are not “over-reacting”, but simply reacting?
Be clear about my position. I don’t think that the Obama Administration is trying to collect my neighbor’s email addresses and ideas. I’m neither paranoid nor right-wing.
I do think, however, that collecting people’s email addresses and ideas will be the inevitable result of the Administration’s ham-handed actions. I don’t care what the exact wording of the request was. The result will be people forwarding emails to the White House, just like the President requested … and that inevitably, in the absence of instructions to do otherwise, many or perhaps most of the forwarded emails will be forwarded in the usual, average, bozo way — click “Forward”, type in “flag@whitehouse.gov”, hit “Return”.
Perhaps that’s fine and proper with you. Not with me. I invited people to defend how those same actions would have been OK if Bush did it. Not one of you has responded that they think that Bush asking people to forward emails critical of the Iraq War to the White House would have been fine and proper and OK with them. Not one.
So unless somebody wants to stand up for Bush’s right to do what Obama did, I call bullshit on the lot of you. You think it’s fine and proper and perfectly understandable when Obama does it, but not if Bush had done it. I think it’s wrong in both cases.
That’s my “hyper-delicate reaction”, and I’m stickin’ to it …