Our politics at its best involves us recognizing ourselves in each other. And our politics at its worst are when we see immigrants or women or blacks or gays or Mexicans as somehow separate, apart from us.
If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void: lobbyists and special interests; the people with the $10 million checks who are trying to buy this election and those who are making it harder for you to vote; Washington politicians who want to decide who you can marry, or control health care choices that women should make for themselves.
I think you need to have people around you who can remind you that, actually, what you just said makes no sense. Fortunately, I have my wife to do that continually.
What the Paris agreement now does is say to China and India and other countries that are potentially polluting, come on board. Let's work together so you guys do the same thing.
Even on health care what you've seen is a lot of stories surfacing lately about people who said, "Well, I voted for [Donald] Trump but I don't think he's really gonna take away my health care."
For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Now, it's true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods-all are now more frequent and more intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science-and act before it's too late.
If 90 percent or 95 percent of those - chemical stockpiles [in Syria] were eliminated, that's a lot of chemical weapons that are not right now in the hands of ISIL or Nusra or, for that matter, the regime.
My family, frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn't raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead.
Now, at times this issue has tended to degenerate into an 'either-or' type of debate. Either we protect our people from terror or we protect our most cherished principles. But that is a false choice. It asks too little of us and assumes too little about America.
The quicker you resolve the problems with banks and there's transparency in that process, the faster they recapitalize and are able to make investments.