If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.

BARACK OBAMA, speech, Aug. 28, 2006

“But on the bright side, I get unlimited power out of the deal, so – Yay Me!”

There are a whole lot of religious people in America, including the majority of Democrats. When we abandon the field of religious discourse-when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations toward one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome – others will fill the vacuum. And those who do are likely to be those with the most insular views of faith, or who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.

BARACK OBAMA, Audacity of Hope

Barack Obama – cynically filling your vacuum since 2008.

All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it’s here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster.

BARACK OBAMA, speech, Apr. 3, 2006

Coincidentally, also the name historians will give to his presidency.

The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose.

BARACK OBAMA, press conference, Feb. 9, 2009

“I consider the Constitution a ‘small difference'”

In an interconnected world, the defeat of international terrorism – and most importantly, the prevention of these terrorist organizations from obtaining weapons of mass destruction — will require the cooperation of many nations. We must always reserve the right to strike unilaterally at terrorists wherever they may exist. But we should know that our success in doing so is enhanced by engaging our allies so that we receive the crucial diplomatic, military, intelligence, and financial support that can lighten our load and add legitimacy to our actions. This means talking to our friends and, at times, even our enemies.

BARACK OBAMA, speech, Nov. 20, 2006

“…and bowing. LOTS of bowing.”

What Washington needs is adult supervision.

BARACK OBAMA, fundraising letter, Oct. 2006

“It doesn’t HAVE it, though, so I’ll be able to do ANY. THING. I. WANT.”

This notion that’s peddled by the religious right – that they are oppressed is not true. Sometimes it’s a cynical ploy to move their agenda ahead. The classic example being that somehow secularists are trying to eliminate Christmas, which strikes me as some kind of manufactured controversy.

BARACK OBAMA, Street Prophets interview, Jul. 11, 2006

“That’s why I’m creating special ‘Winter Celebration Day’ camps so the religious right can safely indulge in their quaint rituals behind the protective safety of barbed wire, watched over by towers full of supportive, well-armed government agents.”

Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.

BARACK OBAMA, speech, Jan. 3, 2008

I liked J. Robert Oppenheimer’s version better: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

I don’t want to pit Red America against Blue America. I want to be President of the United States of America.

BARACK OBAMA, speech, Nov. 10, 2007

“…so that Red America can be destroyed without a fight.”

The market is the most effective mechanism for creating wealth and distributing resources to produce goods and services that history has ever known, but it goes off the rail sometimes; that if it’s completely unregulated, that if there are no thoughtful frameworks to channel the creative energy of the market, that it can end up in a very bad place.

BARACK OBAMA, press conference, Apr. 2, 2009

“That’s why I will overregulate the bejeebers out of the market – so it can end up in an even WORSE place. Barackalypse Ho!”

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

BARACK OBAMA, speech, Feb. 5, 2008

“Everyone else… is just there to pay for it all.”

The true test of the American ideal is whether we’re able to recognize our failings and then rise together to meet the challenges of our time. Whether we allow ourselves to be shaped by events and history, or whether we act to shape them. Whether chance of birth or circumstance decides life’s big winners and losers, or whether we build a community where, at the very least, everyone has a chance to work hard, get ahead, and reach their dreams.

BARACK OBAMA, speech, Jun. 4, 2005

“To that end, my Dream Czar will create a Dream Panel to issue Dream Permits and Dream Waivers to ensure that dreams are distributed fairly”.

A dream ain’t a dream without government approval.

I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago’s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder — alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware — is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.

BARACK OBAMA, preface to 2004 Edition, Dreams of My Father

I will channel their frustration and despair into my own civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded as the US military, and sic them on any of “the powerful” who displease me. Occupy Forever!

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those that prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor — who have carried us up the long rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

BARACK OBAMA, Inaugural Address, Jan. 20. 2009

Those guys? Yeah… they didn’t build that.

The problem is that this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. It prevents learning — since, after all, why should we listen to a “fascist,” or a “socialist,” or a “right-wing nut,” or a left-wing nut”? It makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out. It robs us of a rational and serious debate, the one we need to have about the very real and very big challenges facing this nation. It coarsens our culture, and at its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.

BARACK OBAMA, remarks at University of Michigan, May 1, 2010

If you right-wing nuts oppose me, I will send signals to my progressive thug-buddies, and they will bite your fingers off.