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. I have found no evidence that Americans don't get irony. It's one of those cultural myths, like, "The British are reserved." I don't know why people think this. We've invaded every country we've encountered.

I knew that Americans get irony when I came across that legislation No Child Left Behind. Because whoever thought of that title gets irony, don't they, because -- (Laughter) (Applause) — because it's leaving millions of children behind. Now I can see that's not a very attractive name for legislation: Millions of Children Left Behind. I can see that. What's the plan? Well, we propose to leave millions of children behind, and here's how it's going to work. 2:04 And it's working beautifully. In some parts of the country, 60 percent of kids drop out of high school. In the Native American communities, it's 80 percent of kids. If we halved that number, one estimate is it would create a net gain to the U.S. economy over 10 years of nearly a trillion dollars. From an economic point of view, this is good math, isn't it, that we should do this? It actually costs an enormous amount to mop up the damage from the dropout crisis.

the difference between the task and achievement senses of verbs. You know, you can be engaged in the activity of something, but not really be achieving it, like dieting. It's a very good example, you know. There he is. He's dieting. Is he losing any weight? Not really. Teaching is a word like that. You can say, "There's Deborah, she's in room 34, she's teaching." But if nobody's learning anything, she may be engaged in the task of teaching but not actually fulfilling it.