Taking the progress out of health care reform

It's been a long time since I posted here. Guess I haven't I haven't had much to say. Then I saw this.

the socialist propaganda

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009


The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.
I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.


Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.
And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.
Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.
No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

the lunatic fringe

So it turns out that if I were to stream the duly-elected President's Back-to-School speech into my classroom next week I would be eligible for the same suspension as the teacher who played NWA's "Fuck Tha Police" to her class without permission. Both, I'm told, are in the same category--get this: potentially objectionable--and thus students or their parents must have the choice to opt-out. Stay in school? What socialist propaganda!

I cannot believe there's an audience for this, or that we give them the power. Do you think he wants to quit yet, to give up trying to govern the wingnuts and those who pander to them? I'd walk away myself, except they pay for my health care.

.

Holy cow, Dick Cheney

Crime wave

As if last year's flood weren't enough, my town seems to be going to hell in a handbasket. Though I live in what is lovingly referred to as "the hood", I've never felt unsafe. Recent events are troubling, though.

On the morning of March 24, a woman was robbed at gunpoint in the 1400 block of First Avenue East while she was sitting in her car in a parking lot. Robbery at 7:40 a.m.! And I understand the culprit dropped two beers out of his pockets during the crime, and returned to fetch them.

Less than 18 hours later, two men were shot at Who's on First sports bar, 1323 First Ave. SE. Granted, this happened at a more fashionable hour for crime, but still.

As if that weren't enough, there's now this.

I can hardly wait for summer.

Blago's Last Laugh

Dowd Unglued: Wall Street's Socialist Jet-Setters

By MAUREEN DOWD

As President Obama spreads his New Testament balm over the capital, I’m longing for a bit of Old Testament wrath.

Couldn’t he throw down his BlackBerry tablet and smash it in anger over the feckless financiers, the gods of gold and their idols — in this case not a gilt calf but an $87,000 area rug, a cache of diamond Tiffany and Cartier watches and a French-made luxury corporate jet?

Now that we’re nationalizing, couldn’t we fire any obtuse bankers and auto executives who cling to perks and bonuses even as the economy is following John Thain down his antique commode?

How could Citigroup be so dumb as to go ahead with plans to get a new $50 million corporate jet, the exclusive Dassault Falcon 7X seating 12, after losing $28.5 billion in the past 15 months and receiving $345 billion in government investments and guarantees?

(Now I get why a $400 payment I recently sent to pay off my Citibank Visa was mistakenly applied to my sister-in-law’s Citibank Mastercard account.)

The “Citiboobs” — as The New York Post, which broke the news, calls them — watched as the car chieftains got in trouble for flying their private jets to Washington to ask for bailouts, and the A.I.G. moguls got dragged before Congress for spending their bailout on California spa treatments. But the boobs still didn’t get the message.

The former masters of the universe don’t seem to fully comprehend that their universe has crumbled and, thanks to them, so has ours. Real people are losing real jobs at Caterpillar, Home Depot and Sprint Nextel; these and other companies announced on Monday that they would cut more than 75,000 jobs in the U.S. and around the world, as consumer confidence and home prices swan-dived.

Prodded by an appalled Senator Carl Levin, Tim Geithner — even as he was being confirmed as Treasury secretary — directed Treasury officials to call the Citiboobs and tell them the new jet would not fly.

“They woke up pretty quickly,” says a Treasury official, adding that they protested for a bit. “Six months ago, they would have kept the plane and flown it to Washington.”

Senator Levin said that the financiers will not be able to change their warped mentality, but will have to be reined in by Geithner’s new leashes. “I have no confidence that they intend or desire to change,” Levin told me. “These bankers got away with murder, and it’s obscene that close to nothing is being asked of financial institutions. I get incensed at the thought that a bank that’s getting billions of dollars in taxpayer money is out there buying fancy new airplanes.”

New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, always gratifying on the issue of clawing back money from the greedy creeps on Wall Street, on Tuesday subpoenaed Thain, the former Merrill Lynch chief executive, over $4 billion in bonuses he handed out as the failing firm was bought by Bank of America.

In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on CNBC, Thain used the specious, contemptible reasoning that other executives use to rationalize why they’re keeping their bonuses as profits are plunging.

“If you don’t pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise” and they’ll go elsewhere, he said.

Hello? They destroyed the franchise. Let’s call their bluff. Let’s see what a great job market it is for the geniuses of capitalism who lost $15 billion in three months and helped usher in socialism.

Bartiromo also asked Thain to explain, when jobs and salaries were being cut at his firm, how he could justify spending $1 million to renovate his office. As The Daily Beast and CNBC reported, big-ticket items included curtains for $28,000, a pair of chairs for $87,000, fabric for a “Roman Shade” for $11,000, Regency chairs for $24,000, six wall sconces for $2,700, a $13,000 chandelier in the private dining room and six dining chairs for $37,000, a “custom coffee table” for $16,000, an antique commode “on legs” for $35,000, and a $1,400 “parchment waste can.”

Does that mean you can only throw used parchment in it or is it made of parchment? It’s psychopathic to spend a million redoing your office when the folks outside it are losing jobs, homes, pensions and savings.

Thain should never rise above the level of stocking the money in A.T.M.’s again. Just think: This guy could well have been Treasury secretary if John McCain had won.

Bartiromo pressed: What was wrong with the office of his predecessor, Stanley O’Neal?

“Well — his office was very different — than — the — the general décor of — Merrill’s offices,” Thain replied. “It really would have been — very difficult — for — me to use it in the form that it was in.”

Did it have a desk and a phone?

How are these ruthless, careless ghouls who murdered the economy still walking around (not to mention that sociopathic sadist Bernie Madoff?) — and not as perps?

Bring on the shackles. Let the show trials begin.

At this point, it's either laugh or cry

#@$!!

Of course he did. Of course! He did! Blago appointed a black guy. And when he or some lingering toady thought of it, I bet they laughed and laughed and laughed. Or quoted, say, Borat when he encountered an Uzbekistan embassy.

I can't believe I live here. Is it possible to secede? It's not as if Chicago, our de facto capitol, even acknowledges that this part of the state. The "governor" never even sees Springfield, home of the legislature and a renovated yet empty mansion, so seventy miles southwest of there is surely off the edge of their world. And most every Missourian I've ever met seems to think that the universe ends somewhere over the Mississippi, or that the only thing East of St. Louis is East St. Louis, either that or the neighboring strip clubs. So, clearly living neither there nor there, we can hereby declare ourselves independent. It'll be like Texas, way back when. I believe the Lone Star Republic managed for ten years. Surely that'll be long enough for this to all blow over, to just be an unfortunate episode that the Dems somehow rose above.

Yeah, I don't believe it, either.

Another one bites the dust

As the clock winds down on another title-less fantasy football season, I may as well blog about it.

Sixteen years of futility! My own son, though younger than the league itself, is now a member and mocks me with his team name. Meanwhile, two other teams who have never won play for the title next week. They've waited three and two years respectively. One of them doesn't even live in this winter wonderland.

I really thought this was going to be the year. I had a high-scoring team and don't make rash moves. I'm the third winingest team all-time. The contenders are #14 and #15.

As fantasies go, this one hasn't gone as planned.

1-800-@#$!%$!

I get it, dude. Seriously. While I have not had your specific crappy job, I have had one pretty much like it--just ask my friend here--and I know there's only so much you can do. You've got to answer the calls and you've got to resolve the calls and you've got to reserve at least a small fraction of your brain for pretending that you are not trapped in that particular headset-and-keyboard purgatory. I know how it is.

But, dude. I cannot express to you how helpful it would be if you would focus just enough to listen to what I am saying and read the words that I know are glowing on your screen, me having recited, again, my name and my address and my e-mail address and my phone number and my incident number if not, again, my laptop's serial number, being that said laptop is packed up in a box to send it back to you people, if only you would SEND ME THE LABEL necessary for said shipping. How many times do I have to explain?

Four, apparently.

It's not as if I launched into a rant-- at least not at you. I saved that for the bastards at Charter, lack of Internets on top of lack of laptop being more than I could stand. But try to sell me more services in the midst of blaming me for your company's problem, and I make no promises.

But speaking of which, stupid me for believing the part where you said, "we'll ship it out," and then the part where you said, "it was shipped out," depsite the fact that you could not tell me how or when. Since--this is my favorite part--it never happened. Once because you thought I didn't know what I was talking about and once perhaps just for sport. Silly me for just checking the mail day after day. Patience is not, after all, a virtue.

But persistence is.

Crazy talk

I was shocked, nearly fell off my chair even, to read these words: "there is no rule barring felons from serving in Congress." Go figure.

A Halloween Story

Fear has profoundly changed us
By LEONARD PITTS JR.

Meanwhile, back at the War on Terror . . .

You remember the War on Terror, don't you? It was in all the papers. Back before presidential politics sucked the air from the room and your 401(k) shrank till it was worth maybe dinner and a movie, it was considered quite the important news story. Abu Ghraib? Extraordinary renditions? Fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here? Surely you recall.

I only ask because of a news story that broke last week to a yawn of media disinterest. The Washington Post reported on two secret White House memos explicitly endorsing the use of waterboarding -- simulated drowning -- on so-called high-value terrorism suspects. This is, says The Post, the first time the still-classified memos have been disclosed. They were written in response to requests from then-CIA Director George Tenet, who worried his agents might be hung out to dry if the practice were discovered and the people or their representatives demanded someone's head.

According to The Post, the White House issued written authorizations in 2003 and 2004. Yet in 2006, President Bush told the nation, ``The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it -- and I will not authorize it.''

Which was, of course, a lie.

You'd think the latest proof of that lie -- yet another smoking gun to stack with all the others -- would merit attention. But a computer search Thursday turned up only seven newspaper stories mentioning the memos. Searches of the CNN and FOX news websites also came up dry, though the story did appear on MSNBC's site.

If you think my point is that the media missed an important story, it isn't. No, the point is that normal is not where we thought it would be.


You remember how it was just after Sept. 11, 2001, right? Some of us vowed we would never enter a skyscraper again. Some of us didn't want to leave our houses again. The minutiae of popular culture became staggeringly unimportant. Humorists like David Letterman and my colleague, Dave Barry, wondered if they could ever return to the business of laughter.

We were scared dry. And some of us said: Get used to it. This was the new normal.

But skyscrapers did not close from lack of use. We did not become a nation of agoraphobics. We did not lose our interest in singers and movie stars. Letterman and Barry went back to work.

Fear, which had cut through us like a hot poker, became instead a low-grade fever, ambient noise, wallpaper, something you feel without feeling, hear without hearing, see without seeing.

Then you look up one day and realize how profoundly that fear has changed your world. People are imprisoned without charges or access to attorneys, and it's routine. People are surveilled, their reading habits studied, their telephone usage logged, and it's commonplace. People, including children, end up on a secret list of those who are not allowed to fly, nobody will tell you why, there is no appeal, and it's ordinary. We swallow lies like candy, nod sagely at babblespeak, and it's unexceptional.

Torture is inflicted with White House approval, the president lies about it and it's just another Tuesday.

Once upon a time, Americans were fond of looking upon backward nations, upon places where law was whatever the king said it was, and noting with pride that we do things differently in our country. But that was a day long ago and a country long gone.

If we miss the one or mourn the other, you'd never know it to look at us. We live through what feels evermore like a Joe McCarthy fever dream. We feel without feeling, hear without hearing, see without seeing and do not protest what we have become.

Because this is normal now.

Change you can't believe in

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. And tonight's batch was burnt.

I refer, of course to the $700 BILLION financial industry bailout bill -- which I will henceforth call Wall Street Welfare. It's not like they've never been hypocrites before.

I expected McCain's vote -- especially after he staged the white knight coming to save the day non-event. Obama's disappointed me. This was a chance for him to stand up and show that he won't be a business-as-usual president. That fear and deception will be replaced by hope and truth.

He should have listened to Michael Moore. More people should.

The fine print

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." -- Section 8 of the Treasury's $700 billion bail-out proposal

Just in case you'd forgotten we're still living under the Bush misadministration, here comes its parting shot: making a cataclysm worse.

Krugman. The Nation on John "Keating 5" McCain. The American Prospect.

Leonard Pitts: Do yourself a favor-- read a book

It took some time for the daughter to become a reader. Some time, and some funny exercises to help her eyes work together, and some colorful books about a mouse named Geronimo. The mother was relieved, though perhaps she needn't have worried. The child's life has become so full of so much reading and writing so quickly that surely it was inevitable. Whether nature or nurture, though, as ever it's hard to say. Perhaps as a control group we could check the habits of all those Palin kids in Alaska.

by Leonard Pitts
the Miami Herald

Of course, we all have questions for Sarah Palin:

Does she actually think living across the Bering Strait from Russia constitutes foreign policy expertise? Does she really take the parable of Adam and Eve as literal truth? How, exactly, does one field dress a moose? And why would one want to?

My first question, though, would not be one of those. I'd simply ask which books she wants to ban -- and why.

Yes, there's a list of titles floating around the Internet right now, but it's a fake. It is, however, established fact that our would-be vice president has in the past tried to pull books off library shelves.

The New York Times reports that as a member of the City Council of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin complained to colleagues about a book called Daddy's Roommate, described in promotional material as being ''for and about the children of lesbian and gay parents.'' Laura Chase, who ran Palin's campaign for mayor, explained that the book was harmless and suggested Palin read it.

Chase told The Times that Palin replied she ``didn't need to read that stuff. It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn't even read it.''

Later, as mayor, Palin reportedly asked the town's librarian three times whether she would agree to remove controversial books from the shelves. Three times, the librarian refused. Palin fired her, but eventually bowed to public pressure and gave the woman her job back.

''I'm still proud of Sarah,'' said Chase, ``but she scares the bejeebers out of me.''

And in that context, it seems apropos that next week is Banned Books Week.

As you doubtless know, that's the week set aside each year by the American Library Association to bring attention to attempts by some of us to regulate what others of us may read. The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom reports that it has seen 9,700 ''challenges'' -- a challenge is defined as a formal written request to remove a book from a library because the content offends or is deemed inappropriate -- since 1990. Chillingly, the office suggests that's probably an undercount. It estimates that for every challenge reported, four or five are not.

So Palin has company, to say the least.

Count among that number the woman from a Cuban exile group who bragged to a Miami Herald reporter how in 2006 she checked out and kept an elementary school library book she felt painted too rosy a picture of life on that communist island. Like Palin, she thought she had good reason. Would-be book banners always do.

I'm reminded of how someone challenged me the other day on my contention that anti-intellectualism has overtaken this land. I mentioned by way of example Palin's Bible literalism, but really, there's so much more. There's the ''Jay Walking'' segment on Leno. There's this notion that ''elite'' is a four-letter word. There's the White House's censorship and politicization of science. There's the recent survey which found that more people can name all five Simpsons than all five freedoms enumerated in the First Amendment.

And there's this: as many as 50,000 incidents since 1990 in which a book was forced to justify its existence. We're talking books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, books like The Color Purple, books like Harry Potter and, yes, books like Daddy's Roommate, books that offended because they expressed ideas that made someone uncomfortable. As if any other kind of idea was worth expressing.

We are becoming the stupid giant of planet Earth: richer than Midas, mightier than Thor, dumber than rocks. Which makes us a danger to the planet -- and to ourselves. This country cannot continue to prosper and to embrace stupidity. The two are fundamentally incompatible.

So do us all a favor: Annoy Sarah Palin. For goodness sake, read.

I am a patriot and I love my country -- a welcome forwarded e-mail

I don't cotton to e-mail forwarders much. Especially don't expect me -- or threaten me -- to pass it along lest I'll suffer some unfortunate fate. Don't paint me as unpatriotic. Most of all, I'm not stupid.

After untold snopes.com reply-alls to everything imaginable -- and many things not -- my wife has learned over the years what is fair game and what isn't. So I, at least, open her forwards. This one came from a fellow Progressive Patriot for Peace (embrace the alliteration) from Iowa who now lives in Arizona. Author unknown.

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight ...

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
* Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are elitist.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you've got a well-rounded education.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people
while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl (ED: actually, I think it was sports), 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a true Christian.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
* If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group until 2002 that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, that represents what America is all about.


And, while I'm at it...

an open letter

So there we sat, your step-dad and I. The only two white people in the room. And I was so sincere and heartfelt, and he was so skeptical. But I plowed on, understanding that he and I see different sides of you, understanding that I'd known you longer, and in a different context, and really wanting--needing-- him and of course your mother to know how much I appreciated you. Wanting them to know that unlike the other kids who had just gotten older, theirs was the boy who had grown up. So gratifying, even as mere witness. The highest praise I had, my best gift to you--to tell your parents, directly, how well you were coming along even if it didn't always show on paper, and how much it meant. We were at a party, in the summer. That was Allison talking, not Ms. P.

Thanks for nothing, you idiot.

And then a year later, sitting again with your family because you asked me, because that's where I belonged, I watched you graduate with such pride and satisfaction. On my daughter's birthday, I was there without question: we'd been through so much, for so many years, and we both wanted to see it through. Good times.

Which, as I second-hand understand it, is what you're having now. I won't condescend to say, "You think you're having fun," because between the hormones and the drinking and the who-knows-what, oh, I'm sure you are. It would sound like a typical freshman year to me if you had bothered to enroll. Did we not just spend the last year getting you ready for college? Was that just not a mere matter of weeks ago that you were so excited to go? Am I missing something?

I already knew, by the way, that you had let me down. When the start of the semester passed without any contact or questions, well. That seemed to be a sign. That's not the way things go. I've got a folder full of Sent and Inbox evidence that show the contrary. And when my quick, "So, are you in school?" went days and days with no reply? Well. You know you know. Listen to yourself.

Because I'm sure, at the moment, you're not going to listen to me. Especially now that I'm serious rant mode, inspired by the news from our mutual friend that you don't even have a job. Good grief! No wonder your step-dad tried to throw you out; I should call him and commiserate. Or hear his I-told-you-sos.

I am so disappointed.

Not that this is about me. Not that you aren't smarter than this. I know you are only temporarily playing the part of the fool. Because trust me: this is seriously stupid. So far it's only a semester wasted --and, oh some goodwill of some people who love you--and money you haven't made, but you of all people should know life is hard enough without going and making it harder! And yet, there you are, doing exactly that, there on the road to nowhere.

As you surely must know. When you're ready to admit it and want to try to fix it, you let me know.

Hometown Zero

Kurt Warner came home to Cedar Rapids today and took a tour of my city of ruins. He brought a pen, but forgot his checkbook. He signed autographs, posed for photos, handed out Cardinals t-shirts (no, not those Cardinals), and shook hands.

Whatta guy!

My favorite local sports writer -- and one of the smartest people I know -- let him off the hook, I thought, describing the visit as "an attempt to keep the effects of the flood in the public's consciousness."

Baloney! We're not even a month out.

“I think there’s always the initial push by people to help out, whether it be corporations or individuals,” Warner said. “But it becomes out of sight, out of mind.

You forget about how long it’s going to take these families or this community to rebuild. Once it’s not a headline or a breaking story it gets pushed in the background.”

Does Warner come from the future or something? Perhaps he returned sooner than planned. I'm baffled.

Keith Never Fails