Average, children are hardworking, and women are strong. As a humorist, Garrison Keillor is often compared with mark twain and will rogers. Like mr. Rogers, Garrison Keillor has made multiple visits the National Press club. He spoke in 1986, and 1987 and spoke again in 1994 after 21 years we are so glad he is back again and clearly he was waiting until minnesota was in charge of the place before he was going to come back. Garrison keillor is in the Nations Capital for performances today and tomorrow and this summer he hits the road for up prairie home companions america the beautiful. This is a tour of 30 cities in 36 days. His latest book, the keillor reader just came out in softcover, and on july 4th, a prairie home companion will celebrate its fortyonest anniversary with a live album broadcast in st. Paul and mcallister college. That was the location of the first broadcast of a prairie home companion on july 6th, 1974. Garrison keillor is active in Democratic Politics so he may have a off or two about that subject. He is going to talk with us about 15 things that need to happen tomorrow. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm National Press club welcome to Garrison Keillor. [applause] garrison thank you very much. John, you are much too kind. Dont make that mistake again. You will be held to account for it. It is an honor to be here with you and such a great honor that i have gone to the lengths of writing out the speech which i never ever do. Reminds me too much of being in college. 15 things that need to change right away is the revised title of my speech. [laughter] garrison i came up with this because i was thinking about another speech i gave which was a great honor. I was invited to give the baccalaureate address at princeton university. I was up in princeton earlier this week and it all came back to me much too clearly. I wrote this speech. I thought i should Say Something inspiring to these young graduates, something about life is adversity, it is in struggle that we come to understand ourselves. I thought i should make it funny and so i worked on that end i had a story about the first out house tipping that i experienced in minnesota which i was very much involved in, as a victim. [laughter] garrison but you can change these things around, but then i wasnt sure princeton graduates would know what an outhouse was. [laughter] garrison but then i went up in princeton with this speech in my pocket, and it was an academic procession through the campus, through these awestruck crowds and all these people with gorgeous academic groves and multicolored hoods and ashes and sashes and so on like having gotten a phd at oxford or cambridge or the university of dubai or the university of phoenix or whatever. [laughter] garrison there i was in this plain black robe which seemed to say vocational school. [laughter] garrison i made my way into the great gothic chapel player and got this introduction even more roasts than johns which sounded so much like a eulogy and then i made my way to the pulpit. You have to cross over and then climb the steep stairway, two part stairway to the poll but which is up against a stone wall. The applause lasted about half way up. So the first thing the audience heard from me was heavy breathing and i launched into this speech which was funny. I mean, it was conceptually funny. [laughter] garrison and there was nothing. People sort of looked studious and their eyes were closed, some of them, and there was a little bit of laughter way off in the corner, but not much. It dawned on me about three minutes into this 20 minute speech that my voice was bouncing around in all of this gothic grandeur, and i could hear things i had said 15 or 20 seconds before. [laughter] garrison so that the people who were sitting out in front of me could not hear a single word i was i mean, they could hear a few words but not whole sentences. And i cut about 10 minutes out of the speech by illuminating pages four and five and shot to the end, and there was grateful applause and i came down and through the crowd to a reception and people walked up to me and said good job. [laughter] garrison nothing specific. [laughter] garrison good job. As if you would say that to a child who had a bowel movement. [laughter] garrison not that i disagree with that fourth point that you made, which i hadnt made, and it donned on me, i thought at this reception and in the long painful ride home to minnesota that as i look back on my career in broadcasting, nobody had ever consummated me on a specific thing. Nobody had ever quoted back to me some brilliant thing that i had ever said. It was always general. The quote we like your show we like your show. It really relaxes our children. We listen to it late at night. [laughter] garrison and it occurred to me that i had 40 years in radio as a sort of comforting, baritone presence and that nobody had heard anything in particular the head said. That i had said. I willing to accept that. I am a christian, we want to be of service. But today, i wanted to give a speech that is a little bit more specific so that you will find things to disagree about. It is inspired by the feeling that i had when president obama announced back in december that the administration is going to pursue an opening to cuba. This was thrilling to me. It was like spring coming to minnesota in midjune. It was like, it was like when the plane finally begins to move and you have been sitting on the tarmac for hours, perhaps days, youve lost track, you have heard one explanation after another, whether related air traffic control, a flashing light in the cockpit, one pilot is depressed, i dont know what. [laughter] garrison and then finally you begin to move and you feel incredulity. That is how i felt when the president announced that. And things started to move forward. Somebody in washington was recognizing reality. And this, to the rest of us, is just astonishing. I was a college kid when this blockade of cuba went into effect. I was a poet. I was writing pellets poems in all lowercase letters. And now i am on Social Security. Now people address me as server. People ask me, would you like to use the stairs or take the elevator . All of this time has gone by and to see the government move on this is astonishing. Something happened. Something was done. And now you hear about a Ferry Service that is going to open a between miami, key west, and havana. The Minnesota Orchestra has gone on tour to cuba. They were thrilled, they came back ecstatic. They are musicians. They never get a static ecstatic. [laughter] garrison things are happening. It is so utterly astonishing the president recognizing reality. I felt the same way when he announced he was going to take executive action to protect 5 million undocumented workers from deportation. Nobody was ever talking about deporting these people because they work, we need them, they are part of our economy. Perhaps 11 million undocumented workers. Nobody was talking about shipping and house. The work, the paperwork, astonishing to think of what it would take and nobody wants to send them away so why not recognize them and give them some stability in our country so that people cannot pay them 0. 85 an hour and have the work 85 hour weeks . Why not . This was astonishing. Somebody in washington recognizing reality. And so my speech today. 15, numbered, 15 numbered sings things that need to happen, that need to happen tomorrow. Washington has such a reputation for in action and blockade and dysfunction inaction and blockade and dysfunction that some sort of symbolic thing would be a good first move. I think it is time to finally name the streets of downtown that only have initial letters. [laughter] garrison everybody else names their streets, and why not . I think they should be named for philosophers just to give the city some tone, you know, some class. Only suggestions, but Emerson Franklin hegel, henry james, kierkegaard for k street, martin luther. Machiavelli, of course. And so on. Number 2. See how quickly the speech moves along . [laughter] garrison number 2, i think we need to relax with the flag pins. I am not looking at anybody right now. [laughter] garrison it just seems to me that it has become a requirement for anybody running for Public Office in america to put a little flag pin on their lapel. It has become required that the president , and every speech with God Bless America just so people wont question whether or not he loves his country and i think it is a bad way to go. This is a free country. It really is. I mean, it is trying to be. And parts of it certainly are. And there should not be any requirement that we wear a badge or symbol in this country. This is not germany in the 1930s when you were required to wear an arm band and the swastika had to be the right size end you had to say hiel pronouns it correctly and your right arm had to be at the correct angle. Lets not go too far. I looked senator john mccains web site and there are pictures of him there and he has no flag pin in his lapel. If he doesnt need to wear one then neither do you. I think we should put out a cease and desist order on the announcements still heard in airports in this country to notify authorities if a person or persons unknown to you come up and ask you to carry something aboard the aircraft. Nobody has ever done this. [laughter] garrison nobody. Nobody. Nobody ever will do this. This is fiction and it is not harmful to anybody to have fiction, but it gives young people the sense that authorities are not in touch with reality. And there is enough evidence of that already without adding, without adding to the. To that. [laughter] garrison i also think we can continue the movement in this country to remove some of those fortifications, barriers, the flower pots and so forth that were put up in Public Places to prevent someone driving with explosives. They do not have a good purpose. Theyre more symbolic and anything else, symbolic security is dangerous and engineers told us in the case of most of these barriers, if a truck loaded with explosives pulled alongside and was detonated, these barriers would be splintered and would become flying missiles, and we dont need anymore of that. Number 4, i think we should stop making dimes, nickels and pennies. [laughter] garrison i just think it is time. I see young people dropping small change in parking lots. I cant speak for you but i no longer bend over to pick up a dime. [laughter] garrison i just dont go there. The fundraiser for polio used to be called the march of dimes but diners dont march anymore. They dont. They are not worth enough. We used to say a penny for your thoughts. We dont say that anymore because it would be insulting. [laughter] garrison so i think if we leave the current supply of small change in circulation it will gradually dissipate and disappear and these coins will in time become more valuable. So lets just try it that. Number 5, we need to change the seating arrangement in the house and the senate. Mix democrats and republicans in the chambers so that members dont have to reach across the aisle. They can just turn to the person next to the meinhold out their hand if they wish. Schoolteachers know that when clicks or gangs form in the cliques or gangs form in the Public School, you separate them. You dont let them all sit together. We need to do this in congress. No more red on one side, blue on the other. We should go for a checkerboard effect. And seat from by seniority with the old ones way in the back and the young ones down front just so they get the idea. Number 6, it just makes no sense that people who work hard cannot support themselves let alone supporting a family. This is just part of the social compact in our country that if you work hard day and keep your nose clean, you are going to be ok but you cannot do this on the minimum wage as it exists right now unless your apartment is the back seat of your car and scorecard is up on blocks and you live on pet food. It just cannot be done. Los angeles did something about that this weekend the rest of us should do something about it tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. The way to do is to do it. Number 7, here is an item for which there will be no applause in this room. Not that there was any before. [laughter] garrison radio and Television Frequencies are a Public Resources just like public grazing lands out in wyoming and they never should have been sold. They should have been leased. Maybe it is too late but when a frequency is sold, one party to another, there ought to be a flip tax of 50 of the appreciated value that goes into the public coffers. Radio and tv spectrums are public property and they should be required, radio and tv stations, to provide commercial time without charge to political candidates. Is time to bring back the fairness doctrine which required stations to present a range of opinions on controversial issues. It didnt inhibit anybody, the fairness doctrine. It just meant that when top 40s patients it applied for renewal of license they had to file reports from the fcc, that at 4 00 a. M. On sunday they played something from the league of women voters and that is all they had to do. It was a ritual, and meaningless ritual. But it symbolized the fact that the station, the frequency is public property and that they had public responsibility. Number 8, our u. S. Seventh fleet has been sent to support japan in its defense over islands in the South China Sea which are also claimed by china, the islands which are at last word unpopulated, nobody lives out there, which makes all of this rather meaningless. We should not expect men or women to die defending rock outcroppings in the middle of large bodies of water. Let the Nature Conservancy go out there and defend that. Let greenpeace go out and defend that. Number 9, bid for out in out in california, there is a drought, and people try to have nice green lawns in the desert. It doesnt work. Minnesota, we dont have a giant space heaters in our backyards to make it possible for us to sit in our backyards in february and barbecue. We dont expect that. So people in Southern California have to learn how to love gravel. [laughter] garrison and they have to think twice about what they are growing for export. They are major exporters of allmans and avocados and all heavy water use crops. And those are just the once a begin with the letter a. [laughter] garrison there are a whole lot more. California is exporting their precious water in the form of produce so the rest of us may need to accept that for second periods of the year we will need to meet frozen strawberries and not fresh strawberries. That shouldnt be so hard. Number 10, thanks to alaska and texas and north dakota. Our country is close to being energy independent. For this reason we need to take a deep breath and back away from the middle east. These tribes of the middle east that european colonizers around the time of world war i packed into nationstates are not happy with each other. They need to sort them out themselves. Theres not much we can do to assist that. And what we spend in iraq and afghanistan so far does not appear to have brought progress. It could have gone a long way towards repairing our crumbling infrastructure in this country. You can call this isolationism you can call it ice tea. [applause] garrison whatever. But the president s policy of dont do stupid stuff or cause no harm, is a sensible idea. Number 11, rational conservation still has a long way to go in this country and we need to practice more of it. In minnesota we send electricity that is generated by coal, we send it to north dakota to run their oil pumps which create tens of natural gas which they simply flare off as of by product instead of using it to generate their own electricity. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The era of coalfired power plants is over. So why not bring this gently to an end . It is time to think again about Nuclear Power which was cheap and efficient. There were accidents, three mile island, chernobyl and japan but we can learn from these things. Hollywood made some very scary movies about meltdowns but they also made scary movies about flesheating zombies. And we dont lock up of ugly people who talk slow. [laughter] garrison number 12, music and theater are businesses as much as football or casino gambling and we should use tax increment financing and enterprise zones to include the arts which would bring cities, the inner cities back to life and bring some soul back to the people who live in them. Numbers 13, the country is moving rapidly in the direction of accepting gay people, as people, as people period. The government needs to come belonged with that. Sexual preference is a characteristic. It isnt the key to somebodys identity. People are more complicated than that. I had a friend who came house as came out as gay 20some years ago and it was very dramatic and carried the banner, and fought for the right of gay people to adopt children, and gradually he settles into 15 years of a close, loving relationship with another man hand having won the and having won the right to adopt, he was free to decide he didnt want to. He was happy being an uncle landed not want to have the burden of children. Number 14 how am i doing on time . John you are great. Garrison do you want me to hurry up . [laughter] do you want me to expand, read from the appendix . [laughter] garrison John Garrison number 14, lets give the word diversity rest. A years moratorium. Put it aside. We are diverse. We are one of the most diverse nations on gods green earth and it is one of the shining virtues of this country but the word diversity has been adopted by a bunch of bean counters and social engineers, all of them and the cheers. The league of american orchestras for example has set diversity as a goal. The inclusion and involvement of a broad representation of our community reflecting its true makeup including race, ethnicity and cultural backgrounds gender, Sexual Orientation socioeconomic status disabilities, education and religion. In other words, it is not enough to play mozart beautifully. You also have to make sure your audience includes the right proportion of elderly disabled Gay Asian Men who earn less than 30,000 a year but minority persons are not trophies, they are people. They have their own taste, their own predilections and and what makes mozart worth pl