["The speech Barack gave was not suited for all school aged students. It seemed to be for inner-city teens in the last couple yrs of school."]

And (I) thought I was the only one who thought that!!

Say what you want kiddies...but that speech was one sided and bias...

You people will find out AFTER the fact....and youll be standing there, looking stupid, saying "What happened"?!?!...

Ya know.....its always best to get the burglar alarm BEFORE you get robbed..Once you get robbed, whats the use in a burglar alarm??.....so they dont hit you again??...

Hell, theyve ALREADY gotten what they wanted...

Benign? Hardly.

Next year is a very crucial election year for Congress. Two years after is another crucial election -- for both Congress and the President.

A good number of those kids Obama talked to on Tuesday will be first time voters in those elections. For the most part, they will vote with their hearts, not their brains. They won't weigh the issues and vote accordingly. They will vote for the candidate -- and party -- that they LIKE. The ones who make them feel all warm and fuzzy and good. The ones who say things that SOUND good.

That was the goal of the speech. Just to make the kids LIKE him, so they will vote for him and his cronies.

Not benign at all.

Re: "I was beat out in both categories by Thomas Sowell. There's just no way I could ever measure up to Thomas Sowell."
No, you will have a hard time beating him, but if you are known by the company you keep, you are in fine shape.

Screw your family, plain and simple. You're at fault for sending them to that government institution to begin with and your kids deserve to be zombified by Obama's Mind Control Device. Maybe next time you'll think twice about sending your little rugrats to a government school.

I have had respect for you, but yesterday I was disappointed by your attack on those of us who stood up for what we believe is in the best interest of our families. I have no idea what the previous materials were going to be. I learned of this event after school closed for Labor Day weekend by way of a pre-recorded voice mail. My options were to let my child go & discuss it later or keep my child home & come up with our own lesson plan.

I kept my child home because I am a devoted parent that takes an active roll in my child's education. I believe that part of being a parent is being discerning about what is presented to my child while she is yet too young to fully understand the messages. I am doing my best to help her understand the bigger picture, develop her ability to make independent decisions based on careful reasoning, asking deeper questions, read between the lines, look for long term consequences, collecting & analysing the data available, testing everything, etc. Ultimately, my goal is that she will stand up for what is right no matter who the pressure comes from. Sometimes we won't agree but I value her ability to THINK as an individual.

The speech Barack gave was not suited for all school aged students. It seemed to be for inner-city teens in the last couple yrs of school. Obama would do better to leave this type of motivational speaking to professionals & those who know the children best.

"Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country." "We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems."

First: What a backwards message to START a school year out on. Why put the weight of the world on the shoulders of children, when the adults are unable to handle these issues?

Further, I find it interesting how our kids are supposed to stay in school & do thier best 'for the country'.
The goal of going to school is to better self; parents send thier kids b/c they want to provide the best future possible for thier child(ren). Maybe in Communist or Socialist countries the purpose of education is to brainwash & create automatons for the good of all... but I never believed that was the purpose of education in America.

IMHO He overstepped his position as President of the USA one too many times. I have learned enough about his character over the last few months that I wish I could take back my vote.

Check the date of this article: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/02/wh-withdraws-call-students-help-obama/

That being what IT is, "How do you feel about the Bush Doctrine?"

So you know, I am referring to pre-emptive strikes. Which, in a nutshell, is exactly what the grassroots opposition to the LESSON PLAN was.

Other frogs in the pot sat around picking their noses. Now those millionths of degree warmer frogs are gloating about how beautiful their boogers are. Some are STILL taking them out to look at them!

Neal, seriously, stop trying to pat yourself on the back on this one.

The truth that you try to ignore is that the objections were indeed to the study guides which glorified Dear Leader.

Trying to argue a straw man and then congratulating yourself while dismissing the valid points which demonstrate your inaccurate presumtions is beneath you.

Good thing it's a short week! You done stepped in in it this time, Boortz!

I am pissed because I actually have children in govt schools(and I don't vote (R)). Why are you judging my reaction to this speech AND the assignment after?

I am not worried about my kids being brainwashed(I tried to teach them to hold the courage of their convictions). My main concern was the conversations afterward between adults and a captive audience. Whether teachers attempted to influence students EITHER way would be wrong. Young minds can be easily swayed by peer pressure or even what a "cool" teacher might proselytize.

And Neal, shame on you for coming down on parents who are at least ATTEMPTING to hold public officials at ANY level accountable...

You are correct that pre-speech opposition was counterproductive. The problem is that Obama has no credibility, so the opposition HAD to pre-emptively oppose a potentially damaging speech. It is bad if it's a bad speech and you don't oppose it, and it is bad if you do oppose it and it is a good speech (either revised or as written.)
My feeling is there was more downside risk in the path chosen because no matter what the President said to the kids he was bound to be so pompous and boring that they would never pay any attention anyway.

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.

It wasn't the content or the lesson plan. It was TIMING. President Obama mobilized the right with health care, then he says "Let's do something else!" Since the president's main weapon in health care debate is his personal popularity, the school speech was designed to raise his poll numbers. So while not indoctrination, it was very political and calculated.

Exactly what I've been saying for the past week! This was so predicatable - a misdirection play. Keep your eye on the ball, folks. If you expend all your energy on this foolishness, you miss the end run on everything else and you do look like an idiot in the end. I let my kid watch the pres. and didn't worry about it. She's only 10 and she knows that the president is pursuing an anti-American, anti-capitalist agenda because I taught her so. If the president wants to tell her to stay in school and work hard, I'm all for that.

Neal, if you believe that the White House didn't scramble to rewrite the speech after the criticism, and that this was the planned speech all along, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'll sell you.

Neal, your public schooling shines through on this one! The study material has always been the issue. Just because you only recently heard about it doesn't mean people suddenly changed their tune. You are guilty of what you accuse the democrats of, refusing to listen to the people. Just admit you're wrong and move on.

it's really not up to you to decide what it was that ticked us off, we tried telling you, if you don't believe it, that's your problem.

And Sane Parent, those visitors already DO submit their material for review. Most of them are invited anyway. And I bet if you check your kids material they bring home you would find mention of these visitors.

Bad week for you Boortz.

Neal,

The great thing about liars is that it is so easy to see that they talk the talk but walk a different walk. Neal, consider that this "harmless speech" exposes Obama once again. He cares nothing for the kids. He tells them to stand up and be independent in his speech but will force them to be completely dependent on government by his actions and policies. You are one of the few voices to call out against his true agenda. Don't let the us down by reporting this speech to be harmless. The lies he told will disarm the kids and the dumbmasses into thinking this guy's not so bad after all. He is an apostasy to everything that made this country great.

With love from Tough Love.

P.S. Thomas Sowell sets the crossbar very high. But Neal, you do clear that bar from time to time with pieces like your commencement address. Both of you dish out tough love. Keep it up.

Public officials speak to classes all the time . . . city council members, police officers and firefighters, state legislators, and sometimes even mayors or Congresspersons. Classrooms have other guest speakers from time to time: parents come in on career day to talk about their occupation, professors from the local university come in during "science week".

Are you now advocating that permission must be obtained for a child to hear every single guest speaker, and that all guest speakers must submit their remarks in advance?

Talk about helicopter parenting. What, oh what, will you do when your kid turns 18 and must be subjected to views contrary to your own, either at college or in the workplace?

I am somewhat left of center, but I like Boortz . . . and the reason I like him is because he does not tow the GOP line on issue after issue . . . it is such a refreshing change from the usual predictable blather that comes out of the mouths of Limbaugh,Hannity, Beck, and the rest of the GOP operatives on TV and radio.

I suppose a lot of you will now give Boortz the Kathleen Parker treatment, threatening to never listen to him (or read him) again because he had the audacity to buck the GOP's talking points on a high profile issue. My interpretation, then, is that you will only listen or read anything that absolutely conforms to your world view, thereby hardening your view on everything. Heaven forbid if you would ever subject yourself to a contrarian opinion.

Boortz....I love ya, but, you make fun of those getting their panties in a wad about the Obama speech (which was obviously re-written) and yet you have issues with the Rainbow Fish book. Puleez! At least be consistent.

Neal's right. Obama set up his critics to look like overreacting blowhards. It should have been obvious that the content of Big O's speech to the schoolchildren would be uncontroversial. No big deal.

But that was the point. To desensitize us to the idea of the President addressing our children directly without the usual parental filter. Presidents before have addressed children, but usually as an aside during a prime-time event targeting the whole of the viewing public, not just the Sesame Street set. But we are fools to believe this will be a one-time event.

The purpose of this event was never to indoctrinate the nation's children directly. That would be too transparent for Obama's comfort. It was about leveraging peer pressure among young people.

There are anecdotes of some kids being called "racists" by their classmates in the Charlotte schools because their parents excused them from viewing the address. That's more powerful than any Oval-Office-Approved lesson plan.

Neal, you can sit there and repeat yourself until you're blue in the face, but everyone I have talked with didn't want Obama's speaking to our kids because of the associated lesson plan. Yes, they were concerned about the speech too, but it was always the lesson plan that accompanied the speech that everyone was concerned with.

So do everyone a favor; move on to a different topic. You don't have kids in school but your audience does. Don't pretend to tell us why we were against this speech.

I did not keep my kids at home and I did not mind if they saw the speech, they didn't, the school didn't show it. I simply do not trust our Dear Leader and his Marxist agenda and I would not put it past him to attempt to indoctrinate kids in Marxism.

Sometimes a libertarian will glom onto some innocuous issue and pitbull it to prove they are libertarian - whatever that is. Me thinks you protest too much on this one. Lots of regular folks have awoken to a President and a Congress that's beginning to creep them out. I think you just missed this one from the beginning, failing to get your arms around all the nuances that grassroots America picked up from the beginning. Even President Obama had to backpeddle as his administration missed another one. You should just raise the white flag and retreat on this one. The more you try to dig out of your hole the sillier you look.

Hey, Neal. You were right, we were wrong. But, I'm not embarassed at all. Given his track record, we had every reason to be concerned about what he might say to the kids. I have a liberal friend who called me yesterday, asking how stupid I felt now. I told him that I don't feel stupid at all because this is one of those issues where I really hoped that I WAS wrong. So, chill out. You sound like a Democrat after Obama won the election.