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Topic Author
We gather here at a time of significance and challenge.
This young century has been a difficult one. I can remember as
if it were yesterday when my young assistants came into my
office at the White House to say that a plane had hit the World
Trade Center, and then, a second plane, and then a third plane,
the Pentagon. And later, we would learn that a plane had
crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, driven into the ground by
brave souls who died so that others might live.
From that day on -- from that day on, our sense of
vulnerability and our concepts of security were never the same
again.
Then, in 2008, the global financial and economic crisis
would stun us. And it still reverberates as we deal with
unemployment and economic uncertainty and bad policies that cast
a pall over an American economy and a recovery that is
desperately needed at home and abroad.
And we have seen -- we have seen that the desire for
liberty and freedom is, indeed, universal, as men and women in
the Middle East rise up to seize it. Yet, the promise of the
Arab spring is engulfed in uncertainty, internal strife, and
hostile neighbors our challenging the young, fragile democracy
of Iraq. Dictators in Iran and Syria butcher their people and
threat to regional security. Russia and China prevent a
response, and everyone asks, where does America stand?
Indeed -- indeed, that is the question of the hour. Where
does America stand? You see when the friends or foes alike
don't know the answer to that question, unambiguously and
clearly, the world is likely to be a more dangerous and chaotic
place.
Since world war ii, the United States has had an answer to
that question. We stand for free peoples and free markets. We
will defend and support them.
After all, when the world looks to America, they look to us
because we are the most successful economic and political
experiment in human history. That is the true basis of American
exceptionalism. You see, the essence of America, what really
unites us, is not nationality or ethnicity or religion. It is
an idea. And what an idea it is. That you can come from humble
circumstances and you can do great things, that it does not
matter where you came from, it matters where you are going.
We must continue to welcome the world's most ambitious
people to be a part of us. In that way, we stay young and
optimistic and determined. We need immigration laws that
protect our borders, meet our economic needs, and yet show that
we are a compassionate nation of immigrants.
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Topic Author
Raees wrote: If people thought you were irrelevant before, this seals the deal.
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Raees wrote: When I heard "He’s been working to earn a spot on the PGA tour" I took it as complaint that he plays too much golf. Tiger Woods never entered the thought process.
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell: Mocking Obama's Golfing is an Attempt to Portray Him as an Oversexed Black Man
O'DONNELL: Well, we know exactly what he’s trying to do there. He is trying to align to Tiger Woods and surely, the — lifestyle of Tiger Woods with Barack Obama. Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth. They find every way they possibly can to –
BASHIR: Lawrence — don’t you think — don’t you think that what he’s really trying to do is to suggest that the president is not paying attention to the central issues that come with the responsibility he has? Is he really – Mitch McConnell really making a connection with Tiger Woods who, of course, has become infamous for chasing various cocktail waitresses around Las Vegas and so on?
O’DONNELL: Martin, there are many, many, many rhetorical choices you can make at any point in any speech to make whatever point up want to make. If he wanted to make the point that you just suggested and I think he does want to make that point, they had a menu of a minimum of ten different kinds of images that they could have raised. And I promise you, the speech writers went through, rejecting three or four before they land order that one. That’s the one they want for a very deliberate reason. That — there’s – these people reach for every single possible racial double entendre they can find in every one of these speeches.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/08/30/msnbc ... ing-obamas
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Raees wrote: He's entitled to his opinion. I don't share it.
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