What are the Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids?

It's no secret that I think raising children is a drag. Not so much when they’re young. But an astonishing number of parents don’t want it to end; the ones who invoke cheery sayings  like, “Once a Dad, always a Dad...” and, “She’ll always be my little girl...” I don’t know; that creeps me out a little. 

Seriously. Am I the only one who finds it the tiniest bit needy when parents conspire to keep their offspring dependent into their twenties? Because if you don’t, you may not be wild about my counterproposal that the whole point of parenting—THE WHOLE POINT—is raising adults. Right? Our finished product is people who, under our influence, bit by bit, stop acting like children and start acting like grownups. 

What would keep reasonably high-functioning women and men from accomplishing what seems like an obviously beneficial objective? Put another way: Are there upsides to withholding vital information and training from our children, and so raising people who have a higher than economically-necessary likelihood of boomeranging back into our households — or not leaving in the first place? I have as yet found any upsides that aren’t more than offset by negative consequences.

One result of these considerations is a list (of course — I list, therefore I am). I call this list: Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids.  So, what are the ten things we should never say to kids?

free is good | $3.99 is almost free

Yesterday, nearly a thousand people in the U.S., Great Britain, Spain, Italy and France went to Amazon for a free download of Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids.

Thanks to my friends who spread the word to their friends. We'll do it again soon.

Meanwhile, Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids is available at the almost free price of $3.99 U.S.

So, help yourself (and maybe gift a copy for a friend).

A Little More on the Iowa Caucuses | I'm Sorry You Lost Your Health Coverage

Someone I don't know took exception to my brief post about Mr. Obama's final message to Iowans the night before the caucuses in 2008. My correspondent is understandably distressed and frustrated by the series of personal catastrophes he's endured in the last couple of years. I wish him well and, more, I want to do all I can to ensure that we as a people do right by him and his family — that we do right by each other.

Dear Anonymous,

I'm sorry you lost your job and home and health coverage. I can't think of a single way in which that doesn't suck. I'm sure you're aware that Republicans in Congress, and a few Democrats, have fought tooth and nail to block the President from extending and expanding loan modification programs. Or maybe you're not aware of that, but it's in the public record. And your family is paying the price very directly. Again: Sorry. 

I don't have a job. I quit my last day job a dozen years ago to operate a one-person company. I've been on my own for health coverage since June 2000. If you think things are bad now -- and they still are -- you would have soiled your trousers over the last decade. When my COBRA coverage timed-out, the insurer I'd been with for most of a decade said they would be happy to extend the same plan to me for $6,000 a month. In case you think that's a typo, let me say it differently: My insurance company said they would cover me going forward for a premium of $72,000 a year. I was so shocked by that number that I just laughed at the young woman on the phone -- so loud that I felt like I needed to apologize. She didn't make up that number.

And Speaking of the Iowa Caucuses

This is then Senator Obama's final message to Iowans just before the 2008 Iowa Caucuses.

I think it holds up pretty well: Health care reform and tax relief for working families delivered as promised with more on the way; completing the drawdown of troops in Iraq completed as promised; college loan reforms accomplished as promised. The promise to move toward energy independence is still pending, as is repairing the divide with Republicans in Congress — who, in fairness to the President, appear to have fled into their bedroom and slammed the door. 

Seems to me, citizens can be delighted or dismayed, but it we can hardly deny Mr. Obama pursued and substantively delivered what he promised Iowans four years ago this week.

Speaking of Blue Like Jazz...

Speaking of Blue Like Jazz — which we were not too long ago — I just finished Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

One of many dirty little secrets I protect (well, not anymore) is that I read a draft of the Blue Like Jazz screenplay and viewed a rough cut of the movie without ever finishing the book. I don't know what to say; I got bogged down; I didn't finish; it's just one of those things, OK?

This newish book — A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story — follows the turn in Donald's life after Steve Taylor and Ben Pearson disrupted his routine with an invitation to make Blue Like Jazz The Movie.

"My career, and for that matter my life was stalled before I met Steve Taylor and Ben Pearson," Miller writes. "I am not sure where I would be if it weren’t for their friendship. I certainly wouldn’t have written this book. Thank you for helping me write my story, in more ways than one."*

Anticipation | 3rd Sunday of Advent, 2011

from Starfish235 on flickr

"Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Messiah." — Luke 2:25-26

 Did those who eagerly waited for "the consolation of Israel" know what a troublemaker the child would grow up to be? 

A friend posted a silly button that made me laugh out loud. Not the sort of thing that person usually posts. 

Others were not amused. After half a dozen readers took my friend to task, I commented: 

At the risk of fanning the flame, here's a question put to former Daily Show writer David Javerbaum by Salon, about research for his new comedic book about modern religion: "So spending all this time thinking about it: Does a New York liberal emerge with any new insights on religion as a result?"

A: As a Jew reading about Jesus, I thought he’s a pretty good guy. It’s the same conclusion Monty Python drew in “Life of Brian” – if people actually live what he did, it would be a pretty good world. But Jesus and Christianity have a tenuous relationship at best.

Occupy | If You See Something, Say Something

— Department of Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano, August 17, 2011

If you see something, say something.

This is what citizens who identify with the Occupy movement in a thousand cities and towns across the U.S. are doing. They see suspicious behavior in the financial sector — acts that look fraud, bribery, confidence games, conspiracy and looting. And like the good citizens they are, the Occupiers are saying what they see.

The Occupiers point at smoke rising from the ruins of the real economy and say, "We think someone set this fire by negligence, if not on purpose; and we think it's probably the ones who devised ways to make mad sums without regard for consequences — including burning it down and collecting insurance after the fact in the form of bets laid against their own clients."

Occupiers would like to know if anyone is looking into this, because it's unclear that anyone is, while it's become quite clear there are serial offenders who will be happy to pay hundreds of millions in out-of-court settlements as long as that leaves open the option to take in billions committing the same infractions again and again.

American Haiku | We Are Penn State

are we Penn State, all
caught looking the other way?
yes, we are Penn State

BLUE LIKE JAZZ | finally!

I stayed up late with several hundred of my closest friends at the National Youth Workers Convention in San Diego to watch a rough cut of Donald Miller + Steve Taylor's film, Blue Like Jazz.

In the spirit of full disclosure. Mr. Taylor and I have been friends for something on the order of 30 years. That said, we have an informal agreement not to kid each other. So, I can tell you what I told him: "It's really good; stop listening to other voices; finish it."

Of course, he's too polite to stop listening, but he sees things too clearly to make false compromises at this point.

Taylor directed Donald Miller's screenplay and I think it's funny, thoughtful, unpredictable and real — by which I mean two things. First, Blue Like Jazz will earn a PG-13 rating because freshman year at Reed College — the very same institution from which Steve Jobs dropped-out back in the day — was a PG-13 experience (give or take an R). So don't take your grandmother or your middle school Bible Study when this film is released next April and then pretend to be shocked — shocked! I tell you — at the language and debauchery. It's not a movie for 12 year-olds. And I mean that in the best possible way.

We won't even debate the American Jobs Act?

Last night the United States Senate failed to muster 60 elected officials willing to even debate the merits of the American Jobs Act.

That's how things work under current Senate rules. The Act itself might be passed with a simple majority of 51 votes. But 60 votes are required to bring the matter up for debate.

What part of we need jobs makes this proposal so distasteful that it can't be discussed?

• Incentivizing employers to hire returning Iraq and Afghanistan Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines?
• Hiring, rehiring and preventing the layoff of tens of thousands of firefighters, law enforcement officers and teachers?
• Training to refit capable but unemployed American workers to take jobs requiring knowledge and skills they lack?
• Modernizing more than 30,000 schools across the U.S.?
• Adding — if Moody's Analytics is in the ballpark — 1.9 million jobs — lowering the unemployment rate by a full point and growing the U.S. economy by two percent? (Could your enterprise use a two percent bump at the closing of the year?)

Read the American Jobs Act for yourself. If your Senator voted against even debating the measure, you have a right to know why. Here's where you'll find Senate contact information. 

Press Conference on the Economy | 10.06.11

"If Congress does something, then I can’t run against a do-nothing Congress."
— Barack Obama

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

October 06, 2011

News Conference by the President

East Room

11:00 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, everybody. I will take your questions in a second. But first, I just want to say a few words about the economy.

Next week, the Senate will vote on the American Jobs Act. And I think by now I’ve made my views pretty well known. Some of you are even keeping a tally of how many times I’ve talked about the American Jobs Act. And the reason I keep going around the country talking about this jobs bill is because people really need help right now. Our economy really needs a jolt right now.

This is not a game; this is not the time for the usual political gridlock. The problems Europe is having today could have a very real effect on our economy at a time when it’s already fragile. But this jobs bill can help guard against another downturn if the situation in Europe gets any worse. It will boost economic growth; it will put people back to work.

Steve Jobs | 1955-2011

Your time is limited. Don't waste it living someone else's life.

— Steve Jobs, Stanford graduation, 2005