What Michelle Obama is telling graduates this year

 

Michelle Obama's University of Northern Iowa prepared graduation remarks, as provided by the White House

Thank you so much.  I am thrilled and honored to be here today to help celebrate the UNI class of 2011 – congratulations to all of you on making it to this day. Before I get started, I wanted to let you know that if my remarks run long, I promise to take a break and we’ll crank up the music for the Interlude Dance. I’ve been practicing to get that ninja robot part just right.
 
In all seriousness, I want to thank President Ben Allen for that very kind introduction as well as Executive Vice President and Provost Gloria Gibson, Board of Regents President David Miles, all of the members of the Board of Regents and Katie Berge for her wonderful speech. I also want to thank Congressman Bruce Braley, former Governor Chet Culver, Cedar Falls Mayor Jon Crews and Waterloo Mayor Buck Clark for being here today. And I want to say a special thank you to everyone here in the UNI-Dome especially all of you who changed your plans so that we could celebrate our graduates together today.
 
Now, as many of you know, this is not my first time here in Iowa. In fact, it feels like....

Donald Trump takes on President Obama and Robert De Niro

Donald Trump had a busy day on Monday disparaging two of the most well-known men in their fields: Nobel Prize-winning President Obama and Oscar-winning actor Robert De Niro.

The billionaire's fireworks began this morning on "Fox & Friends" when he was asked to comment on what De Niro had said this weekend on NBC.

"I won't mention names, but certain people in the news the last couple weeks, just, what are they doing?" De Niro said referring to the Trump's favorite subject, the "birther" issue. "It's crazy. They're making statements about people that they don't even back up. Go get the facts before you start saying things about people."

Eventually the actor did mention Trump's name and continued his argument. "It's like a big hustle; It's like being a car salesman. Don't go out there and say things unless you can back them up. How dare you? That's awful to do. To just go out and speak and say these terrible things? Unless you just wanna get over and get the job. It's crazy," De Niro said.

Trump, who says he will let the world know about his plans to run for president on the finale of his television show, "The Apprentice", responded by saying De Niro "is not the brightest bulb on the planet."

The bluer the Oregon county, the lower the gay-teen suicide rate

In a newly released study primarily focused on gay-teen suicide rates in Oregon, some interesting details were discovered. The numbers of suicide attempts by gay teens went down by 20% in counties whose schools had anti-bullying, anti-discrimination policies and/or a Gay-Straight Alliance. The suicide rate was also lower when the proportion of Democrats was higher in the county.

A community that was supportive of gay teens not only curbed suicide among gays, the study found, but also lowered the rate of suicide attempts by heterosexual students by 9%.

Researchers led by Mark Hatzenbuehler looked at five aspects of the social environment surrounding gay, lesbian and bisexual youth on a countywide level: the proportion of schools with anti-bullying policies specifically protecting these students; the proportion of schools with a Gay-Straight Alliance; the proportion of schools with anti-discrimination policies that included sexual orientation; the proportion of same-sex couples; and the proportion of Democrats in the county. Then they rated each of Oregon's 34 counties based on the results of those findings.

The study found that a more supportive social environment was associated with 20% fewer suicide attempts than an unsupportive environment. A supportive environment was also associated with a 9% lower rate of attempted suicide among heterosexual students.

Chicago ban on homemade school lunches packs much more than sandwiches

Maybe it's a Chicago thing, persons in positions of authority believing they know better what's best for others.

No, we're not talking about President Obama, who happens to be in Chicago today to bag up $17 million in takings from his three reelection campaign fundraisers last night.

We're talking this time about a school principal on the West Side there who has banned homemade lunches at Little Village Academy.

No more brown bags or lunchpails filled with a handmade meal from home because Principal Elsa Carmona thinks the nutrition in her school's cafeteria is better than the parental stuff.

"It is better for the children to eat at the school," she announced to our Chicago Tribune colleagues.

Here's the deal: Many Americans feel they've endured the first 815 days of the Obama administration's drive to spend more, borrow more and regulate more.

They notice the oncoming federal requirement to purchase healthcare insurance. They see the president sign the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act last December, giving the feds increased power over the content of local school lunches and vending machines.

And they seem to be growing a tad touchy about being told what to do in....

Why Obama was forced to give today's deficit speech

If President Obama is in political trouble, just wait a minute. He'll give a speech. He thinks speech-making is his best skill and clearly prefers campaigning over presidenting at a desk.

Oh, look! Obama's giving another speech this afternoon.

It's at George Washington University, the administration's new favorite homefield speech-giving place where Obama had Hillary Clinton talk about foreign policy a few weeks ago.

Obama has looked distracted in recent weeks. He launched a war in Libya while taking his family around South America. For more than a week Obama had Clinton do the public explaining and take the "Say What, a Third War?" heat for the guy who beat her in the 2008 Democratic primaries by arguing against such irrelevant foreign conflicts.

Nine days after the first Tomahawks blew something up in Tripoli, a besieged....

Florida Gov. Rick Scott: 'Government always takes more than it gives back'

Florida's new Republican governor, Rick Scott, is not your standard politician. Nor is he an experienced one who worked his way up from town council to county board and then the state Legislature.

The tall, gangly newcomer in Tallahassee worked his way up all right, but it was in business. The son of a JC Penney clerk and a truck driver, Scott was born in Illinois and raised in Kansas City.

After serving as a radarman in the Navy, he graduated from Southern Methodist University Law School and worked in a Dallas firm before entering the business world. His full biography is available here.

He then launched a long, successful and sometimes controversial career in the healthcare industry, driving innovation and cost-cutting, at one point even offering a ...

Late-night's best: Obama's NCAA picks, life expectancy, a squirrel and Al Qaeda fashions

As The Ticket's 61,000-plus Twitter followers here and 6,600 Facebook fans here know, we regularly share our daily picks of the late-night jokes of interest, usually before broadcast each night. Feel free to pass them on to friends using the Share buttons above.

Here's the usual Monday morning collection:

Fallon: A new study finds people diagnosed with depression should get a second opinion. Although ... what’s the point of anything really?

Letterman: A new smallest man in the world today. He’s 22 inches tall. But he says he’s so proud, he feels 2 feet tall.

Fallon: President Obama went on ESPN to announce his NCAA tournament picks. Or as Japan put it, 'Really?!? You’re kidding, right?'

Fallon: President Obama widely criticized for making his NCAA bracket picks on ESPN with important issues like Japan and Libya. Hearing this, Obama said ‘Was today my fantasy baseball draft too?’

Fallon: Obama tells students he was always getting into trouble in school. He talked so much the teacher took away his teleprompter.

Leno: Surprisingly, March Madness is not a big deal in the Mideast. That's because they also have February Madness, April Madness, June Madness, July Madness......

Fallon: March Madness office pools. You analyze brackets, research the....

Up again on Obama's list of things to call for others to do: Education reform

Looks like someone in the White House has done some polling and re-discovered the evergreen PR value of calling for education reform.  

Real honest-to-NEA education reform so that our precious children, those innocent darlings frolicking on some playground somewhere right now, can once again be the best-educated, the best-qualified youngsters in the entire world. That's a big job; it might require a second term to talk about more.

Because, never forget,  those little people are our future. And if they don't get smart enough to get a high-paying job, who's going to pay off all this national debt we've just created by throwing billions of dollars out the window to keep the national unemployment rate under 8%, which didn't work. Not to mention have them pay their FICA taxes to prop up the government-run Ponzi-scheme called Social Security.

President Obama's been way too busy to get his hands dirty in the broken down budget-cutting talks that Joe Biden was too busy overseas to lead. So the next federal spending deadline is Friday. And two weeks after that. And....

Obama's been busy not deciding to do much on the Libyan mess, which was what....

Ohio Gov. John Kasich: 'We will not be raising taxes in this state'

After but 58 days in office, Ohio's new Republican Gov. John Kasich has already driven through the legislature several major reforms and, now, presented his first State of the State Address.

Ohio is crucial politically to both parties next year but especially Republicans, who haven't won the presidency without Ohio for more than a century. The state will lose two House districts as a result of the 2010 Census, but worse, it has lost thousands of citizens and companies in recent years.

Like Obama, Kasich is an ex-state senator. But In his hourlong speech Tuesday afternoon the veteran Kasich gave it the way he likes it -- from notes, not a text or Teleprompter, a method not for the faint-hearted or those whose mind is not chock-full of readily-available details.

The address reads that way (full transcript below), allowing for Kasich to throw in spontaneous thoughts and the names of audience members he happens to be looking at. The less....

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell: 'The private sector is strengthened when the public sector is restrained'

This is the 16th installment in The Ticket's ongoing collection of complete 2011 State of the State Addresses by U.S. governors. (For links to all previous ones, scroll to the bottom.)

 It's by Virginia's Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, an Army veteran, former state attorney general and Delegate (Full McDonnell bio here).

The governor's official blog is here.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell State of the State Address, as provided by his office

Mr. Speaker. Mr. President. Justices of the Supreme Court and Judges of the State Corporation Commission. Ladies and Gentlemen of the General Assembly. My fellow Virginians:

It is my duty and honor to join you again tonight in Thomas Jefferson's Capitol for the annual State of the Commonwealth Address.

And I want to welcome Sen. Bill Stanley and Delegate Greg Habeeb to the greatest legislative body in the world, just 24 hours after the polls closed. Congratulations.

At the start of this speech, I ask that we all join together in a moment of silence for the victims of the senseless violence that unfolded in Arizona this past weekend. SILENCE. We continue to....