jeffcagle:
I love how the Penguins let President Obama hold the Cup for the photo op, while other teams only let Bush stand next to it holding a miniature replica.
OMG Don’t do it Obama. It’s bad luck to touch it before you win it yourself. Now you’ll never win the Stanley Cup yourself…
And too often, we fill that void with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and the softer stories that Walter disdained, rather than the hard news and investigative journalism he championed. “What happened today?” is replaced with “Who won today?” The public debate cheapens. The public trust falters. We fail to understand our world or one another as well as we should –- and that has real consequences in our own lives and in the life of our nation. We seem stuck with a choice between what cuts to our bottom line and what harms us as a society. Which price is higher to pay? Which cost is harder to bear?
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.
Using drugs didn’t destroy Obama’s life; going to prison would have.
squashed:
Could we put Cheney back in his undisclosed location so we don’t have to hear about this sort of thing? Cheney managed to persuade a lot of people that there was an imminent danger to the country through use of extensive gravitas. A lot of bad things happened because of this.
Not anymore. If there’s a serious enough threat that we need to torture people or incarcerate people without charges or representation, bring the evidence. Or is it that Cheney needs to believe that there was and is an imminent threat to the country that could only be prevented by his extreme actions in order to sleep at night?
Conservatives need to decide whether Obama is largely continuing the Bush security policies or putting the country at risk. They can’t have both.
Obama’s most recent address covers a lot of the issues I hugely want implemented but unfortunately they’re still rhetoric. I do believe Obama wants to do everything he can to make this true but I find it difficult for the Congress to make these changes while the problems Lessig noted are casting their shadow over policy.
PS It’s awesome to see Obama using Vimeo!
This makes me extremely sad.
(via hilker:kevintwohy)
