I do like the ability to travel through time – it provides the chance to reflect on the changing times. For example, I recently went back to October 1991. President George H. W. Bush (Bush, Sr., if you will) had just delivered a speech to the students at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, D. C. There was little furor over the speech prior to its delivery unlike recent times. The speech was no memorable one and largely focused on overcoming peer pressure and fighting the stereotype that being smart isn’t “cool”. Of course, the interesting part happens after the speech.

The democrats are the majority party in Congress and began denouncing President Bush’s speech and ordered the Government Account Office (GAO) to investigate the production and costs of the appearance including having top Bush officials appear before Congress for a hearing on the issue. The Washington Post front page story the following day decried the event, “The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props.” The hearings delved into the expenditure of $26,750 to produce and televise the event.

Richard Gephardt (D-MO and House Majority Leader) argued, “The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students.” And, of course, we can’t forget the unions – the National Education Association came out saying that it “cannot endorse a president who spends $26,000 of taxpayers’ money on a staged media event…while cutting school lunch funds for our neediest youngsters.”

It’s interesting, isn’t it, to compare that event with today’s speech by President Obama? We’ve reviewed the content of the released version of the speech. The cost of the production hasn’t been released, but with the cost of inflation, we’re looking at about $43,000. This time, the NEA is in support of the speech to the point that they developed materials for teachers to use in conjunction with the speech. None of the major newspapers have decried the speech. Democrats in Congress are actually denouncing those opposing the speech as shameful.

I’ll leave the following questions as homework to the reader: what’s the difference between the two situations?

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.