Obama Ipsum

Now let me be clear. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America - they have served the United States of America.

While studying here, my father met my mother. So let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am President. 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. Instead, it is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.

I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change. And today, we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office. We cannot walk alone. Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust.

More to do for the young woman in East St. So doing the Lord's work is a thread that's run through our politics since the very beginning. And all across the country, communities of faith are sponsoring day care programs, building senior centers, and in so many other ways, taking part in the project of American renewal.

At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. And when one of his chief advisors - the man who wrote his economic plan - was talking about the anxiety Americans are feeling, he said that we were just suffering from a "mental recession," and that we've become, and I quote, "a nation of whiners." If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice - but it is not the change we need. What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose - our sense of higher purpose. The same is true for the astonishing progress within Muslim-majority countries from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai.

Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you.