Principal Obama

[GoodWitch58]

I so agree. What do you think it would take to get more attention to the "real" issues, and less to the nonsense?

 

[scooterbug44]

I so agree. What do you think it would take to get more attention to the "real" issues, and less to the nonsense?

I really don't know - If I knew, I'd do it. Biting my tongue, ignoring, redirecting, distracting, calls for civility and common sense, and introducing non-political topics don't seem to do much.

Someone said "We'll achieve peace in the Middle East when we realize we love our children more than we hate our enemies."
Maybe we'll stop squabbling when we realize "We love our country and our children's futures more than we hate the other politicial party?"

Sadly, I think it would have to be something extreme (like 9-11) to make people get a long overdue reality/priority check (and even that was short lived). It just seems like the sniping and politricks gets worse every day and it isn't doing our country or us any good.

 

[30ashopper]

Maybe a few right wing elites threw the term socialism around referring to Hillarycare while dressing in the country club locker room. But it did NOT even come close to making it into mainstream conversation.

What did make the mainstream (and ended up being surprisingly effective) was a tv commercial produced by the insurance lobby which depicted a middle aged couple expressing their concern over the "bureaucratic nature" of HillaryCare.

Go ahead and do a quick search for papers and post mortems on why HillaryCare failed. You will be hard pressed to find the usage of the term "socialism" in anything that wasn't recently written.


The McCain campaign realized that the word socialism evoked fear in lots of "real americans" when it was applied to "that one".

The good news for folks who voted for Obama is that hope trumped fear. The bad news for the country is that fear ate its Wheaties after the November beating the GOP took and it remains a common thread to scare the uninformed.

There is a reason why you didn't hear Joe the Plumber call Obama's ideas progressive instead of liberal. Just as there is a reason you didn't hear him call him a social democrat instead of a socialist.

You are clearly smart enough to articulate nonemotional objections to a social democratic model. Most Americans aren't.

But when you and the pundits cleverly swap the term socialism/socialist with social democrat the concepts change for the masses and end up eliciting the emotional response of fear- which then ends up trumping all logic and reason.

You are clearly smart enough to see the point I make about the usage of the fear inducing term "socialism"as being valid but for some reason you are resisting and instead repeating your talking points about all of the "social terms" being valid critiques of Obama's politics (which they are).

Quit. Would you please?

Here's a new one I like-

Soccer moms and tradesmen are doing on camera interviews saying they don't want their kids exposed to the president's speech because they "oppose the indoctrination of our youth into liberal socialism".

Puulease. That language wasn't used by these folks until it was scared into them.

SOCIALISM = FEAR
FEAR = ACTION

This is what the GOP is going with...

When has whipped up fear of the extreme not been a part of our political landscape? What are you complaining about exactly, the fact that a political party is using fear of extemes to build it's support or the fact that the republicans are the ones doing it successfully today?

YouTube - LBJ Daisy ad

 

[GoodWitch58]

I really don't know - If I knew, I'd do it. Biting my tongue, ignoring, redirecting, distracting, calls for civility and common sense, and introducing non-political topics don't seem to do much.

Someone said "We'll achieve peace in the Middle East when we realize we love our children more than we hate our enemies."
Maybe we'll stop squabbling when we realize "We love our country and our children's futures more than we hate the other politicial party?"

Sadly, I think it would have to be something extreme (like 9-11) to make people get a long overdue reality/priority check (and even that was short lived). It just seems like the sniping and politricks gets worse every day and it isn't doing our country or us any good.

Here is one explanation. This is Matt Taibbi writing about the health insurance reform fight, but what he says can be true for many other things as well:

"
Then again, some of the blame has to go to all of us. It's more than a little conspicuous that the same electorate that poured its heart out last year for the Hallmark-card story line of the Obama campaign has not been seen much in this health care debate. The handful of legislators ? the Weiners, Kuciniches, Wydens and Sanderses ? who are fighting for something real should be doing so with armies at their back. Instead, all the noise is being made on the other side. Not so stupid after all ? they, at least, understand that politics is a fight that does not end with the wearing of a T-shirt in November."

What have we all done to support the implementation of the issues we felt so strongly about when we voted for Obama?

 

[Rita]

.
There's a poll on facebook that asks "Should President Obama be allowed to address the nation's school children without a response from the opposition?"
Another version adds "without parental permission" or something like that. POORLY worded poll!

Anyway, I'm wondering what the "response from the opposition" would be? The poll politicizes it, for goodness sakes.
Would the opposition say: "Now I know you have heard your president tell you that you should strive to be all you can be and stay in school and all that, but we on the opposing side think you should save that rhetoric for the military if you were to join. If you find the going gets tough in school and life, it'll be OK if you don't try as hard, no one will hold it against you. blablabla"

Dumb arse polls.:roll:

.

 

[30A Skunkape]

This thought occurred to me: We have people getting miffed that Obama is going to give a little pep talk to public school students, yet it is totally acceptable that military recruiters have access (enthusiastically endorsed by the most vocal Obama critics, I dare say) to the same? Why not outrage aimed at recruiters? After all, Obama is the commander in chief, and recruiters are there for no other reason than to potentially put kids in harm's way. Why the inconsistency?

 

[jensieblue]

essay

I don't care if Obama gives a speech a week to the kids regarding working hard and staying in school. What I do object to is the DOE materials that ask for essays on " How can I help the President" and such. Totally unnacceptable. My gosh, even Chris Mathews said this morning that this was too far and wrong. (Source Morning Joe)

wonder where he stands on the "What I did over my summer vacation" essay? okay only if student did nothing involving politics or off limits all together? Anyone remember when education was education?

 

[GoodWitch58]

I find it interesting that the question is being interpreted as a political statement. It is as though some people think that the president is not the president of all the people; that everything he does is for an agenda of his own; some deep mysterious something to be feared.

Chris Mathews sees it (he sees everything)from a political point of view) and said on his show that some staffer should have realized that the Rs would use it against Obama (I am paraphrasing, but not much).

I can remember a time when the question"how can we help the president?" would have been interpreted completely differently. What if it had read,how can we help the president make things better for our country?

Just asking.

 

[GoodWitch58]

wonder where he stands on the "What I did over my summer vacation" essay? okay only if student did nothing involving politics or off limits all together? Anyone remember when education was education?

I remember when we had a robust civics component to our education.

Today, many college students (and sadly too many adults who have somehow made it through college) have no idea how a bill is passed through Congress. In fact, many have no idea how Congress is constructed; how many representatives each state has; how the Electoral College works; what the duties of the Vice President are; how the Constitution affects us all, every day.

They are clueless about the role of lobbyists; have little idea about the Civil Rights movement, the suffrage movement, the Vietnam war...I could go on and on.

(I base my comments on my every day experience of teaching students to write: I find I need to give them a civics lesson before they can even understand how to write a paper for the American Government class--the high schools have almost completely ignored any civics or government except for those who are in an honors segment.)

I think it way past time that we taught our students more about government and politics. Perhaps if more people understood the process and how it works and the responsibility each of us as citizens has to keep our elected officials on their toes, then we would not be in such a politically polarized place as we are today. And the idea of contributing to the public service of our country would not a career looked down upon with such disdain by so many.

I agree with Skunky, we can send military recruiters into the schools for the sole reason for talking the students into military service--usually with the lure of a college education--only to have too many of them die in Iraq or Afghanistan before that dream of college can be realized--but the president isn't allowed to give them a pep talk about why it is important to stay in school.

Something is drastically wrong with that picture IMO

 

[Geo]

When has whipped up fear of the extreme not been a part of our political landscape? What are you complaining about exactly, the fact that a political party is using fear of extemes to build it's support or the fact that the republicans are the ones doing it successfully today?

YouTube - LBJ Daisy ad

I thought I was reasonably clear. I'll try once more-

I'm not complaining. I am advancing the theory that many Americans are acting nuts (keeping their kids home from school to protect them from hearing a speech from our president) because they are motivated by fear based language. In particular, I believe the term socialism/socialist has helped propogate this fear.