Here’s an excerpt from President Obama’s commencement address at Kalamazoo Central High School yesterday.  This is a classic “do as I say, not as I do” speech.  As such, I’m going to annotate this excerpt to more accurately reflect reality.  My edits are in red.

“… don’t make excuses [even though that's been my chief strategy as president.  I inherited this nasty recession from the evil Republican, George W. Bush, remember?  And those Republican dirt bags and Tea Party morons misrepresented my health care bill.  It really is a great bill--really, it is.]  Take responsibility not just for your successes, but for your failures as well [I've never made a mistake, though, so I'm not really sure what that's all about.  Hanging out with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Tony Zezko, and Rod Blagojevich was definitely not a mistake.]

The truth is, no matter how hard you work, you won’t necessarily ace every class or succeed in every job [just look at my first year and a half in the White House].  There will be times when you screw up, when you hurt the people you love [like when I had to pretend that I didn't really like Revered Jeremiah Wright's sermons, even though I attended his church for about two decades], when you stray from your most deeply held values [like when I had to pretend to be a centrist and conservative during the 2008 campaign, saying that I'd cut taxes and reduce the national debt].

And when that happens, it’s the easiest thing in the world to start looking around for someone to blame [I've got a few regulars that I like to blame:  the rich, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Wall Street, oil companies, Republicans, the Tea Party movement, small town people who "cling to guns and religion," the media (even though they love me)].  Your professor was too hard; your boss was a jerk; the coach was playing favorites [Leon Panetta couldn't have been less qualified to be Director of the CIA but he's a big Dem, so I really didn't have a choice]; your friend just didn’t understand.  We see it every day out in Washington, with folks calling each other names and making all sorts of accusations on TV [like when I blame George W. Bush for everything.  Did I mention that I inherited a terrible recession?].

This community could have easily gone down that road.  You could have made excuses – our kids have fewer advantages, our schools have fewer resources, so how can we compete [even though Derek Jeter seemed do okay, (Kalamazoo Central class of 1992)]?  You could have spent years pointing fingers – blaming parents, blaming teachers [but the liberal teachers' unions don't like that and I really need their votes if I'm going pull this re-election thing off in 2012 and things are starting to look dicey], blaming the principal or the superintendent or the government [because we're always here to help].

But instead, you came together.  You were honest with yourselves about where you were falling short.  And you resolved to do better – to push your kids harder, to open their minds wider, to expose them to all kinds of ideas and people and experiences. [I'm very open-minded.  I like all liberal ideas--don't have too much use for conservative ideas, though.]”