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Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was President - when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has under George Bush. That promise is our greatest inheritance. There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
John Kerry believes in energy independence, so we aren't held hostage to the profits of oil companies, or the sabotage of foreign oil fields. But we cannot walk away this time. America, this is one of those moments. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding.
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. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist. America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them.
Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. I have made a solemn pledge that I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family's premiums by up to $2500 a year. But as Americans, we also know that this is a nation of laws, and we cannot have those laws broken when more than 2,000 people cross our borders illegally every day. Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. It is where our union grows stronger. Too many tears have flowed.
In this election, we offer that choice. We have to do what we can, knowing it's hard and not swinging from a naive idealism to a bitter defeatism - but rather, accepting the fact that we're not going to solve every problem overnight, but we can still make a difference. When I listen to another worker tell me that his factory has shut down, I remember all those men and women on the South Side of Chicago who I stood by and fought for two decades ago after the local steel plant closed. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Indeed, it suggests the opposite: we must face these tensions squarely. Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.
Thank you, God Bless you, and God Bless the United States of America.