in short, damned

The White House today confirmed a rumor that lists will indeed be kept on September 8th when President Obama make a historic speech to America's children. "It is my belief that attendance will be taken," revealed Press Secretary Robert Gibbs during a noon press gaggle. "Most people don't know this, but in the taxpayer funded public school system, attendance it taken each and every day and written down in a permanent record. Furthermore, being excused from the President's speech will require a parental permission slip, and this too will be noted on the permanent record as well as used to update a Department of Education attitudes survey. So to answer your question, yes, at least in theory it should be possible for us to identify every child in the country that skips out on the President's little chat." Asked if he advise for parent's who worry that Obama intends to indoctrinate the kids into his Socialist agenda, Gibbs would only smile and say "I would advise them to tell their children to sit quietly and politely, and to listen very carefully to everything the President tells them."