Are the local schools running the Obama speech to US students next week?
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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. -
Seems to me he intends to speak to them about responsibility and the importance of bright minds to work hard to develop the skills needed to survive.
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I kind of disagree on the immigration problem. We should encourage immigration as much as possible -- as long as its the right kind of immigration.
This is a nation of immigrants, after all, and as I mentioned, what makes us "Americans" historically is our ideas about politics and hard work, not where we were born and what languages we speak natively.
I think we have to figure out how to disincentivize coming to america for the wrong reasons, and those reasons mostly have to do with the large blanket of public services offered to people, no questions asked.
I am worried about making an air tight border for a few reasons
- it will be really expensive
- it won't work
- it will be just as effective for keeping us IN as it will be for keeping others out.
This last point may sound paranoid, but the Berlin wall fell only about 20 years ago. In the past few years it has become much harder to enter/leave the US, even if you are a US citizen, and in an effort to try and get more money any way it can, the US government has been trying to change tax and accounting rules left and right to keep foreign money from US citizens back int he US, and to try and tax money from former Americans who have left. Don't think that the idea of Uncle Sam not wanting us to leave is completely unthinkable.
Basically, to "Fix" any immigration problems we have, we'd need to unroll much of the "progressive" agenda of the last 80 years. This country makes it very hard to work: you cannot work without a tax ID, you cannot agree to work for less than minimum wage, soon you won't be able to work unless you can find someone willing to give you health insurance as well. Also, your employer can't fire you without fear of breaking the law, so they are very gunshy about hiring people.
In effect, our current labor and welfare laws make it easier to be on the dole than to get a job in many cases.
Even though I am in the software industry, and the H1-B program amounts to protectionism for my line of work, I think it should be scrapped, and we should let in all of the Indians and Chinese folks that want to do software/IT/technology work. These are people that want to come here to work, with jobs already lined up. They pay our taxes but don't get our citizen ship rights. Why wouldn't we jump on that with as much haste as possible?
Because "our" lawmakers are trying to "protect" American jobs.
Well, I don't want protection in this form. I want every one in this country to have to compete based on their value/worth. That includes me. An "American Job" is one where the employed puts money into the American economy, and competes on their merit, not where they were born.
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and yet over a million illegal aliens are working today in the US, not paying taxes.
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Well, i don't know the exact employment/tax arrangements of illegal aliens, but they are certainly paying some taxes: sales tax on what they buy, fuel tax on the fuel they use, etc. And they are pumping value into the economy if they are holding down jobs.
I'm a bit surprised by this argument though: everytime I hear about "the little guy" dodging taxes, I think "good man, good man". But that's because I'm generally not a fan of taxes and especially not a fan of what that money usually gets spent on.
And more concretely: there are many millions more "Americans" who do not file income taxes and who unlike illegal immogrants, do not work at all and provide NO value to the US economy (and questionable value to their fellow man).
IOW, if you are talking about drain on the economy, the non-working birth-right citizens are a much bigger problem than the possible-income-tax-evading illegal aliens that work 18 hour days. Personally, I want to kick the first group out and give the second group some legal safeguards.
The summary is: the problem is with the laws of America, not its border security. The things you don't like about the illegal alien population happen in the citizen population as well, and unlike illegals, the citzens have and continue to vote themselves a larger share of YOUR wealth, whereas the aliens generally work their ass off.
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How about the immigrants who come here and live off the gov't money? Seems like these people are the ones driving the nice cars, have big screen TV's, and all the cool stuff a lot of us wish we could afford.
Where is this money coming from and why do they deserve it?
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Grr;287297 wrote:
wow that was a really good speech, im actually impressed with him for once.I should almost put that in my signature Gary....
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i wouldnt get used to that kind of response from me. In fact, did you hear him at the union gathering over the weekend?? Holy shit what a fucking nutjob, giving all this power and praise the the AFL-CIO and SEIU, 2 of the groups that are most instrumental in destroying this country
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PSiedTSi;287305 wrote:
It is nice to hear something from one of our leaders that didn't include propaganda or any other political agenda.They removed that part from the speech. Thats what all the hullabaloo was about earlier last week.
DaveH
'94 Supra- 7.77 @ 176mph -
Link;287303 wrote:
How about the immigrants who come here and live off the gov't money? Seems like these people are the ones driving the nice cars, have big screen TV's, and all the cool stuff a lot of us wish we could afford.Where is this money coming from and why do they deserve it?
I don't like them any more or any less than people born here who live off of government money.
The laws are written such that there are incentives to do nothing and have babies, no matter where you are born. *That's *the problem. If we stop foreigners from coming here and living off of government money, we will have stopped at most 10% of the problem.
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thrash;287312 wrote:
I don't like them any more or any less than people born here who live off of government money.The laws are written such that there are incentives to do nothing and have babies, no matter where you are born. *That's *the problem. If we stop foreigners from coming here and living off of government money, we will have stopped at most 10% of the problem.
Stopping the 10% is better than stopping 0%.
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Link;287313 wrote:
Stopping the 10% is better than stopping 0%.True, but it might cost more than the 10% we'd save to do this.
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The issue is that it is a misplaced anger. Are you more against illegal aliens getting money/breaks than native-born citizens? Why?
Because people focus on the illegal alien aspect of it, it becomes an immigration issue instead of the unsustainability of our entitlements programs.
The fact of the matter is that this country did very well on essentially an open immigration policy, until it started promising too much stuff to people who didn't perform.
So by making this an immigration problem, people can claim you are racist / xenophobic / whatever and distract the whole problem away from the real issue: entitlements.
[of course, they could also claim you were racist by attacking entitlements, but they'd be factually wrong and showing their implicit racism.]
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thrash;287316 wrote:
The issue is that it is a misplaced anger. Are you more against illegal aliens getting money/breaks than native-born citizens? Why?Because people focus on the illegal alien aspect of it, it becomes an immigration issue instead of the unsustainability of our entitlements programs.
The fact of the matter is that this country did very well on essentially an open immigration policy, until it started promising too much stuff to people who didn't perform.
So by making this an immigration problem, people can claim you are racist / xenophobic / whatever and distract the whole problem away from the real issue: entitlements.
[of course, they could also claim you were racist by attacking entitlements, but they'd be factually wrong and showing their implicit racism.]
Shit, they call me racist if I look at a black guy wrong. what the fuck does it matter any more?
And yes, it may cost more up front Chuck, but look at the money saved in the long run. Instead of paying all this money out to these deadbeat's, they could MAKE MONEY buy forcing this morons to actually get a job. If they don't want to get a job... well gtfo. Simple.
But of course with this being a "free country", shit like this will never go away.
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Holy....way to much to read
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