President Barack Obama stood in front of many young Americans Thursday afternoon (October 14) and addressed various issues facing this nation during “A Conversation with President Obama.” During the live event, which aired on various channels including BET, CMT and MTV, the president spoke about education, immigration, bullying, violence and more.
On politics:
“We’ve got to be able to have a conversation and recognize we’re all Americans, we all want the best for this country. We may have some disagreements in terms of how to get there but all of us want to make sure that our economy is strong, that jobs are growing. All of us want to make sure that people aren’t bankrupt when they get sick [and] all of us want to make sure that young people can afford an education. I’m pretty confident that if we work together over the next several years that the political temperature will go down, the political rhetoric will go down because we’ll actually be making progress on a lot of these issues.”
On immigration:
“One of the things that we’re trying to do to deal with the immigration issue is to accelerate the process for legal immigration. This is something that we don’t talk about a lot. A lot of the focus is on illegal immigration. But we’re a nation of immigrants so the question is how do we make legal immigration faster, less bureaucratic, [and] cut the red tape?
On healthcare:
“Health care passed. I’m proud of the fact that a lot of the young people here are going to benefit very directly. If you are under 26 years old and you don’t have a job, or the job that you have doesn’t offer you health care, you can now stay on your parents’ health insurance till you’re 26 years old. If you have a preexisting condition, you are going to be able to get health insurance. Insurance companies can’t deny it. We’ve eliminated things like lifetime limits, allowing insurance companies to drop you for your coverage when you get sick.”
On bullying:
“Obviously, our heart breaks when we read about what happened at Rutgers, when we read about some of these other people who are doing nothing to deserve the kind of harassment and bullying — just completely gets out of hand.”
“Now, in terms of the Internet, you’re right, it is a challenging thing because the Internet — part of the power of the Internet is, is that information flows out there and it’s generally not censored and it’s generally not controlled by any single authority. But at your school, for example, I think there is nothing wrong with instituting policies that say that harassment of any form, whether it comes through the Internet or whether it happens to you face to face, is unacceptable; that we’ve got zero tolerance when it comes to sexual harassment, we have zero tolerance when it comes to harassing people because of their sexual orientation, because of their race, because of their ethnicity. And I think that making sure that every institution, whether it’s our schools, our government, our places of work, take these issues seriously and know that in some cases there are laws against this kind of harassment and that prosecutions will take place when somebody violates those laws. Sending that message of seriousness is something that I think we all have to do.”
“There’s a values component to this. Peer pressure can lead people to bully, but peer pressure can also say bullying is not acceptable.”
On “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy:
“We are moving in the direction of ending this policy. It has to be done in a way that is orderly, because we are involved in a war right now. This is not a question of whether the policy will end. This policy will end, and it will end on my watch.”
“I agree with the basic principle that anybody who wants to serve in our armed forces and make sacrifices on our behalf, on behalf of our national security, anybody should be able to serve, and they shouldn’t have to lie about who they are in order to serve.”
On sexual orientation being a choice or not:
“I am not obviously — I don’t profess to be an expert. This is a layperson’s opinion. But I don’t think it’s a choice. I think that people are born with a certain makeup, and that we’re all children of God. We don’t make determinations about who we love. And that’s why I think that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong.”
On education:
“We’ve got to make sure that teachers are respected, that they are rewarded, that young people like yourself who have talent and want to work with people, that you’re able to support yourself and live out a great life being a teacher.”
“African-American boys, oftentimes fall behind in school early, start feeling discouraged, check out, drop out, end up on the streets and then get into trouble. If we can make sure that young [boys] starting at the age of three or four already know their colors and their letters and get [into a] good preschool, and by the time they get into school they’ve got a good teacher and are getting the support that they need and are able to keep up with their class work … that is gonna do more to reduce the incarceration rate at the same time, obviously, as it increases the college-enrollment rate. That’s why we’ve got to prioritize education going forward.”
For a complete transcript of the event, please visit whitehouse.gov.
So? Check out dis real hip hop. http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_5473508
On The Coming “New World Order”:
“We Are Working so far we have done a lot to advance this process we are still a few years away from total takeover we have brainwashed a good amount of you youth threw the media we made sure u dont ask questions.We just need Mass Population Reduction usein harrp on hati to cause the quake wasn’t enough that’s good we distract you y’all with all the Jersey Shore Lindsy lohan talk on the News if u would research you would find out that we had the airzone cleared to fly in hati two weeks before the quake & in Dec we had fema in miami load up supplies & had them ready in 5 warehouses to ship out What a “Coincidence” Huh ???
^^^ Real talk. wake up people!
Ok, what the fuck? Why is this shit on hhdx? gtfoh
is he apologizing for fucking up our future?
So teaching little kids their colors is going to keep them out of jail when they grow up?
Wow this joke is our president?
More promises for him not to keep.
just like middle class isnt going to get their taxes increased, lie
just like they were going to close Gitmo, lie
just like this was supposed to be the summer of job revival, lie
just like healthcare wasnt going to be a tax, lie
just like unemployment would dip after the stimulus, lie
not like we’d expect anything but lies from a president anyways
So far I like the comments! I thought for sure there would be a bunch of uninformed individuals since this is a hip hop website. Good job people for actually learning what is going on in politics and not just saying, “He’s black so therefore he is doing a great job.” When in actuality he is going down as the worst President ever and that is including Jimmy Carter and “W”.
This man Obama is a PUPPET. Just like all the others. People- keep doin your research and learn the real truth and whats really goin on in this world.. Stay Strong!
Barry Osotoro aint shit!
yeah ok javier sotomyor
WAKE UP! Seriously go buy that John Legend and The Roots album because it is the perfect time to listen through that and really WAKE UP to what is going on in this COUNTRY and world in general. PEOPLE NEED TO STOP WITH ALL THESE REALITY SHOWS AND WATCHING THE NEWS!! FIND KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR SELF AND THINK YOUR OWN THOUGHT! PEACE.
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DC MARYALND VIRGINIA ALL DAY!! I wanna be seen and heard by the right ppl ALL AROUND and get some work in,collab, tour ect.
Get @ me leaving.carter@gmail.com
If none of you can remember Pres. Clinton had us benifiting for 3-4 years of surplus?
And, then The Republicans and Pres. Bush began to contribute to our current deficit.
Anybody remember? He had favoured the rich with such economic benifits as the legendary tax cut, which has you, me, and us in the most legendary debt in history, as far as I know. But, hey… I’m used to poverty.
You don’t know much do you? Bill Clinton did awful until the Republicans took over the house in ’94 until ’06. Yes “W” fucked up with his Presidency but, the Democrats have had the house since ’06 which a lot of you don’t know and have really fucked everything up. Just because one is President doesn’t mean he can call all the shots. The house is the one who really calls the shots and the Democrats shots suck like you wouldn’t believe. Do some research because I don’t have all day to type here about there ineptedness.
You must be wealthy? I remember Clinton submitted a budget that would cut the deficit by $500 billion over five years by reducing $255 billion of spending and raising taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of Americans. And, it took Gore’s tie-breaking vote in the Senate to pass the bill. As, every Republican voted against. Which, OMG… only led us to an amazing surplus. Eliminating a 5-6 million dollar trade deficit. With an annual economic growth of close to 5%. Until, tax cuts for that wealthy 1.2% by none other than, you got it, Republican President Bush. Which lowered our Benifits, Immediatly, and ultimately leading us to the current 11-14 Trillion dollar deficit. That experts propose will not be be payed for the next 20 years, thanks to The White Republican. Now, we need to decide, raise taxes or adapt to Bankruptcy.
Yes I am rich. I am fairly positive that I paid for you to go through grade school and hight school. I am alos sure I pay taxes while you collect money from the government.
I have to ask you if you are dumb and lazy? Becasue only a dumb lazy person would have your view on everything. I am not trying to be mean that is just the way a person from my background would view someone like you.
I hope you know that we are so far in debt because of poor retards. Did you or your mom purchase a house that you or her couldn’t afford? If so congrats on that.
Good luck in the future with your horrid look on things. It won’t get you far at all.
I’m actually studying English Minor 221 and History 103 here at U.B.C..
Was it you who had payed for me? Yikes… lol… Maybe not the sharpest pencil, but, I do, rather, appreciatte the atmosphere.
Back to Politics. I hope you know that we are so far in debt as a result of government similiar to a household, has ‘expenses’ and an ‘income’ and, when those expenses exceed our income we introduce ourselves to our deficit and debt. And, since 2002 this has been our case. And, we’ve only done this as our taxes do not pay for the services we’ve been provided. We love low taxes/ I love low taxes. lol… we want it all. We want tax cuts, we want spending programs, government investment. What we don’t want to do really is pay for it. We need to raise taxes for the wealthiest 2% with Barack’s signature, while at the same time, accept that Bush’s economic policies where not in favour of our economy. Instead he insisted on politics, as opposed to our economy. Tax cutting is a Republican philosophy only to ever raise taxes themselves, if not, leave the following office the responsibilty.
and, we were almost the only two who avoided the real-estate. lol… we need the city, but, the prices have been overwhelming. Lucky us
Bytch. lol…
Bytch.