Michelle Obama Visits Department of Education in Washington

‘I know I said I wouldn’t be political but…”………Michelle Obama makes her first speech on educating America

The Daily Mail
She said her number one priority was to be America’s ‘mom-in-chief’.
But Michelle Obama is drawing comparisons with Britain’s Cherie Blair as it becomes clear she has no intention of being a stay-at-home mother during her husband’s presidency, even if home is the White House.
The new First Lady surprised Washington with a visit to the US Education Department to rally support for the controversial $900billion recovery package that is lumbering through Congress.
It was the first stop in a series of solo speeches planned for key government departments in the coming weeks.
And analysts said it underlined the Ivy League-educated lawyer’s determination to be regarded as more than just a mother to daughters Malia, ten, and seven-year-old Sasha.
Few had expected Mrs Obama, 45, to be so publicly active so soon after moving into the White House.

‘It really does surprise me because I had gotten the opposite impression from those statements about being first mom-in-chief,’ said Myra Gutin, a first lady historian and professor at Rider University in New Jersey.

Mrs Obama’s speech espousing the importance of the public schools system also got her into political hot water.
Don’t Know Much About History
The Wall Street Journal
Stopping first at the Department of Education to thank employees for their service and rally them for the tough work ahead,” the Associated Press. While at the Education Department, Mrs. Obama committed this howler:

In thanking the workers, she told them: “I am a product of your work.”

“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the public schools that nurtured me and helped me along,” said Mrs. Obama, a Chicago native who attended its public schools as a child.

Michelle Obama was born in January 1964. The Department of Education began operation in May 1980, when Mrs. Obama was a 16-year-old high school junior. Apparently she is unaware that there were public schools before there was a federal Department of Education–though we suppose that’s evidence that the department does not bear all the blame for the schools’ going downhill.
Critics said she was opening herself up to charges of hypocrisy because her own children recently started attending the exclusive Sidwell Friends private school in the capital that costs almost $30,000 each a year.
And before their father was elected president, the girls both attended the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where their mother was on the board.
Speaking to education officials on Monday, Mrs Obama said they faced a tough road ahead.

So many of you have been here struggling and pushing for decades and Barack and I want to say “thank you” for what you’ve done and “thank you” for what you will continue to do,’ she said.

She plugged her husband’s stimulus plan, saying it will help prevent teacher lay-offs and modernise schools.

‘There’s a lot of work to do and we’re going to need you,’ she said. ‘The children of this country are counting on all of us.’

She said the visit was the first of many to government departments in the coming weeks and months ‘to say hello, to learn, to listen, to take info back where possible.’

Wild Thing’s comment…….
So it begins LOL . They kept her silent toward the end of the campaign. They won’t keep her silent now.