Obama endorses X-Box, Wants the iPhone Replaced

The text of President Obama's speech was released today due, in large part, to the heat he got from me on Friday and in it he made the following statements:

"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."

and

"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..."

I know he's a Blackberry man, but why - why would he tell the kids of the nation to go out and invent a new iPhone? What's poor Stve Jobs going to do??? And he obviously hasn't had the chance yet to read my post about X-Box Live.

He also said:

"And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it."

Not porn star.

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.

Wait. Did he just say he hates Capitalism? What exactly does he mean by MORE FREE? Free HEALTH CARE, perhaps??? Hmmmm.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems.

But what about depending on wishes and dreams? Won't that pay the bills???

If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Kudos to Barack for not adding to this, "you're quitting on me."

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.

Rumor has it this line was written directly by Oprah.

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.

Whoa. This speech just took a turn for the worse. Did he just say that even if you don't try your hardest that you can still grow up to be the President of the United States?

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.

But if you don't feel like working hard, kids, we've got some really crappy schools set aside for you. See? We're thinking of everybody.

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 your mom is a hooker and your dad is a former Democratic president who served in the '90s and doesn't pay her enough hush money to make ends meet...

Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around.

George Bush is the devil.

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.

Hey! Destructoville is a nice place to live. Now get the hell off my lawn!!!

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

. Just because you're a screw-up, don't expect to to be able to coast through life and get everything handed to you, buster. Especially if I'm not reelected to another term!

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.

And the music swells. Cue flags waving in the breeze. Bald eagle flying overhead in three... two...

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.

Yep. Brown University. People bet me that I couldn't make a subtle racial joke in my speech. You owe me $20, Hillary.

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.

...as he does every few months. But then, thanks to the Amber Alert system, he'll be returned to his parents safe and sound.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois

. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I've gotta stop you here, Barry. You JUST SAID you lived in a mud hut in Indonesia or something when you were little. You're going to confuse the kids, man.

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.

Yeah. Screw the teachers' and the school district's goals for your education. Abe Lincoln was self-taught, and he had a pretty good life, right? (getting shot in the back of the head aside, of course)

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 be the next Batman.

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.

We need the tax revenue, dontchaknow? And sick people don't make as much.

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.

You'll be what the government tells you to be, damn it (pending the 2012 election). And we're dreadfully high right now on reality TV stars and low on crystal meth dealers.

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.

Somewhere, Michael Jordan is saying "Hey!!!"

If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

Except for you, sitting in the third row - picking your nose. You are stupid.

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.

Yeah. Much like this speech, which has been drastically revised since everyone in the nation went all Destructo on me last week.

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.

Except if your goal is to be a pole dancer. Then just go ask your coach. Or Miley Cyrus.

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.

And your Uncle Barack.

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.

Indians??? Orphans??? Geeks???

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?

Let's hope we don't spiral down the rabbit hole of micromanagement to that level, though...

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.

All hail and thanks to Uncle Barack.

Oh, and by the way, Barry, the computer in lab number two is acting a little funny. See if you can get that OS reinstalled, will you?

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America

. B-Love out!