The most presidential lorem ipsum in history.
They're deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old - is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced.
I understand you switched venues at considerable expense and inconvenience because of unfair labor practices at the place you were going to be having this synod. He was nominally a Muslim since there were a number of Muslims in the village where he was born. On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it.
And he knows that it's not enough for just some of us to prosper. For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga. But it is where we start. I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful.
What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them. But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans? How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement? In all nations - including my own - this change can bring fear.
But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans - the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang-violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. Over seven years ago, the United States pursued al Qaeda and the Taliban with broad international support. Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. Indeed, faith should bring us together.
Thank you, and God bless America.