Lindsey Graham isn’t a leader, he’s an actor; playing a role in order to appease the critics and maintain power at all costs.
In 2016, Graham used the election year as an excuse to block the Republican-led Senate’s consideration of Obama appointee Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia on the high court. After the media was swift to hold Graham’s 2016 words (and his 2018 words) against him as he requested, Graham on Saturday morning pointed to other, more recent comments he made to NBC News and The Hill.
In her tiny fragile frame lay all of our hopes and dreams.
The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Left me shaken, numb, gasping for air.
I thought she was indomitable. She had beaten cancer four times. She was an icon, a hero, a legend. Her brilliance was staggering, Her compassion endless.
In her tiny fragile frame lay all of our hopes and dreams.
Yet I, with misplaced confidence in all that is good, Ridiculously believed her fierce desire to live And to make our country a land of equality and justice for all Somehow had the power to conquer death itself For at least for a few more months.I was sadly, terribly wrong. The Notorious RBG is gone.She took her last breaths At the very last moments Of the Jewish Year 5780, A truly dreadful year.
That year, thank God, is over. And her legacy remains with us As we enter 5781.Ruth Bader Ginsburg taught men at the highest levels of power – and they were all men in the days she began her crusade – that gender, like race, is a construct. That the differences between men and women had been magnified by culture and centuries of unquestioned belief into ridiculous stereotypes. That gender roles confined women and men into prisons of conformity and put hurdles in the way of our individual pursuits of happiness. That women could be the best lawyers and have the finest legal minds. That men could be the kindest parents and caregivers. That the government had no business forcibly assigning us into designated slots. That we are all human. That those who would forcibly delineate male or female roles for us were as damaging to human freedom as the radical authoritarian states that would choose our professions for us.RBG gave us freedom, the power to be ourselves. It is impossible to imagine the world we now live in without her. A world where women are taken seriously. Where we have a female Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates. Where I – as an openly gay man – am regularly criticized (as I should be!) for my thoughts, my words, and my deeds but virtually never any longer for my sexual orientation. Where my colleague Delegate Danica Roem serves well and ably and with the gender of her birth an afterthought. Where people with different physical and mental abilities are valued for their humanity; not their differences. Where the fact that I posted Hebrew at the top of this page, in knowing reverence to both Justice Ginsburg’s religious faith and my own, would not be seen as a barrier to our success but an honor to our connected affinity – a recognition that people of various religions, along with atheists and agnostics, have a lot more in common than the beliefs which divide us.I realize we are not quite there yet. We still face gender, racial, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic inequities. Under the current President, this inequality has been magnified. He openly attacks those who have been traditionally disparaged – women, minorities, immigrants, those with disabilities – with a passion and fervor not seen since Ruth Bader Ginsburg began her career in the 1950s, since she was first in her class but unemployable because no one wanted a “lady lawyer.”Our world is shaken. But we must act with resolve and with confidence. There is no time to despair. There is work to be done.
Would the Notorious RBG have tolerated a bunch of us moping at her loss? Not for a moment: This Justice who issued a Supreme Court ruling from the bench The very day after losing the love of her life, Marty Ginsburg, A man who sincerely believed in gender equality long before it became a commonplace notion.Yes, she was indomitable. Few of us have the mental or physical fortitude Of this tiny giant.
I don’t call on us to mirror her brilliance, her strength, her greatness. With few exceptions (Thurgood Marshall comes to mind), that’s impossible. We can’t come close to matching that.Nevertheless, some ancient Talmudic wisdom comes to mind. Our rabbis wrote thousands of years ago:It is not your responsibility To complete the work Of perfecting our world.
But you are required. To do your part.(That’s worth rereading a few times.) Let us all resolve In her name, In her honor, In her legacy, and In her blessed memory
To redouble our efforts To finish the job she set out to do.
She gave us a fantastic head start. But now she is gone.
How can honest people support a person who shows absolute ignorance on almost any subject? How can so many people still believe a president whose closest advisers are already in jail or are under investigation? How can people who teach their kids to be honest and respectful look at them and tell them to respect a man, knowing he does not follow any moral guidance?
Does a president need to lead by example? Will a president’s behavior affect people’s behavior? Can we, with clear consciousness, support an amoral politician?
Democracy is based on participation. But if the president lacks morals, values and principles, people become cynical, lose trust in the system, and democracy falls.
Can we trust a president who we know is not honest? A dishonest president corrodes people’s trust in government. And distrust of our government destroys the democratic system based on people’s participation.
A president needs to have the common good in mind when making decisions. For example, when deciding immigration issues, common decency and empathy should be a compass. A person who is capable of taking children away from parents, without feeling compassion, has no moral compass.
Hypocrisy
Why are we teaching our kids good morals if they know that someone who does not have good morals was elected president? Can we teach kids to be honest, respect others, not to lie and not to steal and then turn around and say that it is okay when a politician is doing all these things?
“political ethicists have emphasized the ways in which democracies can fall apart in the absence of personal virtue. Conservative thinkers, in particular, have argued that political institutions can only function when all those who participate within them are capable of compromise and of self-government. Rules, to put it simply, don’t work unless people governed by those rules care about them and voluntarily choose to abide by them.If this is true of citizens, it is even more true of the president, whose opportunities to damage the system through unprincipled actions are so much greater.”https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2019/02/opinion-must-the-president-be-a-moral-leader.html
INTEGRITY
“Integrity is having a strong set of ethical principles, being able to tell the truth no matter the consequences, admitting to a wrong even if you could get away without doing it.Integrity is about doing the right thing; it is being incorruptible, honest, and above all, doing all these things when no one is around to see it.”
I am trying to use logic to outline, to reason, to explain why principles and high morals are important. But maybe it is simpler than that.
Let’s put aside politics.Isn’t it natural to feel repulsion, anger, sadness, shock seeing this man in OUR WHITE HOUSE?
Let’s talk about integrity, principles, moral clarity. How can any decent person ignore all lies, unethical behavior and derogatory speeches? How can people who consider themselves decent and moral defend an adulterer, a crook, a cheater? Trump mocked a disabled person, a reporter. He ordered the separation of children from their parents.
How can honest people support a person who shows absolute ignorance on almost any subject? How can so many people still believe a president whose closest advisers are already in jail or are under investigation? How can people who teach their kids to be honest and respectful look at them and tell them to respect a man, knowing he does not follow any moral guidance?
How do you feel listening to all these lies?
How do you feel seeing a man mocking a disabled person?
How do you feel watching little children separated from their parents?
How do you feel watching democracy crumbling around you?
Does watching this man in the White House, decapitating the EPA, our land and sea, make you sad, angry?
How do you feel watching this man’s smirk when he is hugging our American flag?
Morally blind
So why are we trying to explain the obvious to a blind person?
How do you explain how the sky looks to the blind?
How do you explain colors, fall leaves to the blind?
How do you explain birds singing, trees whispering in the evening breeze to a deaf person?
However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.
Irish Times
April 25, 2020
By Fintan O’Toole
Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.
However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.
Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.
As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted … like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”
It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.
The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.
If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.
Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?
It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.
Abject surrender What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.
Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.
In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”.
Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”
This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.
It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.
Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.
The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.
Fertile ground But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.
There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.
Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.
And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.
That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.
And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.
As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.
Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.
Although the American economy is chugging along, I am very concerned about the long-term effect of the Trump administration on our nation and the world.
Let me state that not everything is Trump’s fault. But his administration and Republicans are not dealing with problems facing our country and the world. And in many cases are exacerbating the problem.
Although the American economy is chugging along, I am very concerned about the long-term effect of the Trump administration on our nation and the world.
Below I tried to shortly outline my
points and my reason for worry.
Economy
The econom affects all of us. Many factors affect the American economy. Considering the fact that it is global now and all developed countries depend on each other, it is crucial for the countries to work together in trade, security, climate change, migration.
Other things that affect our economy in the long run.
The growing deficit and Government debt due to sanctions, trade wars among other things, and the uncertainty due to American chaotic behavior.
“In two separate papers published over the weekend, some of the world’s leading trade economists declared Trump’s tariffs to be the most consequential trade experiment seen since the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which were blamed for worsening the Great Depression. They also found the initial cost of Trump’s duties to the U.S. economy was in the billions and being borne largely by American consumers.”
Broken trade agreements – TPP,
NAFTA leading to America being sidelined by China.
“Speaking
at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland last weekend, Xi said China would be happy to take over
the leadership role in global trade that the United States has now
relinquished. That will be good for China, but not so good for anyone
else.”
“Leaving
the TPP also undercuts U.S. leverage with China. While China was not
a party to the agreement, the TPP had led to a fierce debate in China
about prospects for joining it, as well as the type of economic
reform it needs. That reform incentive, which could have led China to
become a fairer player in the global market, has vanished.”
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/02/07/the-high-costs-of-protectionism/
Trump
hailed Kim as “a very worthy, very smart negotiator” and a
“very talented man” who “loves his country very much,”
and vowed to meet with him “many times.”
US
adversaries are watching us self-destruct as Trump foreign policy
spins into chaos.
After a promise to restore America’s standing in the world, Trump has blundered into conflict with our competitors, insulted our allies, and generally has made the United States into a laughingstock. Why is this happening? Who’s in charge in Washington these days?
Adding to insults by Trump, key U.S. ambassador posts remain vacant. Over two years into President Donald Trump’s administration, U.S. ambassadorships to 52 countries and international organizations like the United Nations remain vacant. “By not appointing an ambassador to a country, you are saying that this country is not important to us, its issues are not important enough to us, we don’t care about it, and we are not going to bother to send an ambassador,”
Education: Lack of affordable education (despite promises during election campaign, no policies to combat shortage of technically skilled work force)
Price
Of College Increasing Almost 8 Times Faster Than Wages
The
average for all four-year institutions comes out to $26,120 per year.
This brings the total cost of attendance to an astronomical total of
$104,480 over four years. The comparable cost for the same four-year
degree in 1989 was $26,902 ($52,892 adjusted for inflation). This
means that between the academic years ending in 1989 and 2016, the
cost for a four year degree doubled, even after inflation. Over that
period, the average annual growth rate for the cost to attend a
four-year university was 2.6% per year.
Many
of the 6.8 million Americans looking for work do not possess the
skills required to do most of the 6.0 million unfilled jobs.For
a variety of reasons, many jobless Americans lack the skills
necessary to do today’s unfilled jobs.
American farmers are in trouble.
The
president’s trade policies have sent U.S. agricultural exports
plunging, exacerbating already difficult economic conditions facing
farmers. Average farm income has fallen to near 15-year lows under
Trump, and in some areas of the country, farm bankruptcies are
soaring.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/06/farm-crisis-trump-trade-policies-1147987
Society
Dangerous
rhetoric from the White House leading to: Hate groups
are multiplying.
Income
disparity is widening and exacerbated by recent tax cuts.
“Income
inequality in the United States is getting worse, and Trump’s
policies have something to do with it, according to new research from
Moody’s Investors Service, the bond-rating agency. While
middle-income earners got a modest tax cut from last year’s Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act, higher earners got a much larger windfall. And
that comes as other forces have been widening the gap between the
rich and the rest.” “Should
inequality go unaddressed,” the Moody’s report asserts, “social
tensions will continue to rise, leading to a more fractious political
landscape that increases political risk, and with it a less
predictable policy environment.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rich-poor-gap-getting-worse-trump-193238702.html
Irreconcilable differences between
right and left groups that are moving in opposite directions.
The
United States is driven by the politics of extremes. To paraphrase
humor columnist Dave Barry, Republicans think of Democrats as
godless, unpatriotic, Volvo-driving, France-loving, elitist latte
guzzlers, whereas Democrats dismiss Republicans as ignorant,
NASCAR-obsessed, gun-fondling religious fanatics. An exaggeration,
for sure, but the reality is still pretty stark. Congress
is in a perpetual stalemate because of the two parties’ inability to
find middle ground on practically anything.
Moral
bankruptcy of current White House affects Americans. rots American
society.
Disrespect
of the office of President. This White House is a laughing stock for
the world.
“The
fish rots from the head”: a historian on the unique corruption of
Trump’s White House
History
will judge Trump, and it will not be kind.
I
spoke with Dallek about the history of corruption in American
presidential politics and why he sees the Trump administration as “a
low point in our history.” What makes Trump exceptionally
dangerous, Dallek argues, is how effortlessly he lies and what kind
of tone he has set in this White House.
Danger of a major
military conflict. The after
war world order that includes United Nations, NATO and was created
under the leadership of the United States. So disputes between
nations are resolved by the World Trade Organization, not by military
conflict.
NATO assured safety for Europe and
is under assault by Trump administration.
Populists win in other counties (trump example) While there is no clear answer to the reasons of rising populism around the world (and there are many), the fact that populist (Trump) is the President of the most powerful country in the world is a dangerous precedent that may lead to accelerating this trend and undermining the world stability.
Russia becoming more aggressive
China and the Western world
tensions.
Broken nuclear agreement with Iran
and plans to share nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia.
If Saudis get nuclear technology there are several dangerous possibilities: Iran will accelerate it’s plans to acquire nuclear weapons, Saudis might decide to blackmail Israel. Both are not good options for Israel.
Unwillingness of current
administration to take cyber security seriously.
If
anything, our enemies are only going to do more, not less.
Saving
America from itself: Trump is a symptom, not the disease. By Garry
Kasparov.
It
is therefore vital to produce a positive agenda for real action. We
want to look to the past not for solutions, but for inspiration.
Young people desire grand challenges and we have failed to offer them
outlets for their ambition and creativity. The Founders believed that
each generation would find ways to keep democracy alive and it’s time
to prove them right. We must make building things up more attractive
than burning them down. After you’re done watching “The
Avengers: Infinity War,” it’s time to really save the world.
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/saving-america-trump-symptom-not-disease-article-1.3972109?fbclid=IwAR2819ovR_vZdiqSxAzdBWZgewcDiUPnlWq7yp2LcbMzwGXIge2jEi2T0vk
In conclusion I just want to state again that Democracy is fragile and in need of being protected by people. We need to be informed, to be willing to participate, to voice our informed opinions, to vote.
Democracy is not just politics. And those of us who have experienced dictatorships understand it.
President Trump failed to show leadership in the condemnation and, by his failure to do so, he normalized the antisemitic marches with torches (“Jews will not replace us”)
Trump America.
Is Trump good for Jews?
Many of Russian Jewish immigrants tell me that they support Trump because “Trump is good for Jews and for Israel.”
And in this article I am attempting to analyze the situation in America, Israel and the world to determine whether this assumption is correct or just wishful thinking.
While one cannot deny that antisemitism comes both from the left and from the right, one cannot compare (not yet) the university campus ill-informed, well-intended stupidity and the age-old hatred by Nazis, some Muslim groups (Farrakhan)and white supremacists.Anti-Semitic incidents surged nearly 60% in 2017. Trump’s rhetoric is causing sharp divisions in America. And as a result there is rising antisemitism in our country. And we all know that if a situation in our country worsens (the economy, for example) the Jews will always be blamed.
“A confluence of events in 2017 led to a surge in attacks on our community – from bomb threats, cemetery desecration, white supremacists marching in Charlottesville VA, and children harassing children at school,” said ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt in a statement. “These incidents came at a time when we saw a rising climate of incivility, the emboldening of hate groups and widening divisions in society.”
It’s the largest one-year jump in the nearly 40 years since the ADL began tracking such information. This jump is happening at the same time that the ADL is reportinga 250 percent rise in white-supremacist activity on America’s college campuses.Continue reading “Israel and Trump.”
And, yet, there is another America, an America of the future. An America that is smart and kind, brave and compassionate. An America that represents everything that makes this country great and exceptional. People of all walks of life–these people are with you, Mr. President. Old and young, wealthy and poor, black and white, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, immigrants who just came to America and the children of the Mayflower.
The weight of the World
You have aged, Barack.
The weight of the world is on your shoulders.
You knew it would be hard, but not that hard.
You knew you would have to deal with difficult problems, but not so many, not that difficult.
You knew some people would not like you, but not that many, not so much hate.
You wanted to be a great president, you wanted to accomplish great things, you wanted to help fix what is wrong with our country.
Barack, you knew it would be hard, but you were full of energy and optimism.
You believed in America and its people.
You expected that Americans would support you and would be thankful for what you did.
You knew that politics might slow you down, but not that much.
You knew that the Congress might be divided and that the Republicans would not work with you. But you believed you could work with those people, with Americans who were elected to represent all of the country.
You talked to people about hope, and change, and optimism. “Yes, we can!”
Your energy, your optimism lifted America, gave it hope. And this optimism, this hope swept you into the presidency. The black guy, Barack Hussein Obama, became the President of the United States of America.
People felt good about the future.
Another America
Barack, you did not realize that there was another America, an America of money and greed, an America of hate and bigotry, an America of ignorance and stupidity. You did not anticipate that some Americans in Congress would not work with you, no matter what.
You did not expect such hostility from people whose job is to do what is best for the country, for all the people.
Barack, you did not realize that there was so much ignorance and hate in America, and you kept asking yourself why these people – average Americans – did not like you, no matter what you did.
You read, heard and saw a steady flow of poisonous lies and distortions about yourself, and it was so hard to remain optimistic, to keep going, not to get discouraged. After all, you are just human.
You knew it was a hard job to be a President, but you wanted to do it.
The face of Evil
Barack, powerful forces are united against you, forces whose only objective is money and power.
Morality and compassion are not in their vocabulary. These people don’t care about America or any other country.
For them you are the enemy. Not just because you are a black man with a funny name. You are their enemy because you dared to work against their interests, because you are working for a better America, not for them. You do not fit into their plans, Barack, and they will not forgive you. And these people that represent power and greed are skillfully brainwashing the weak and ignorant.
It is painful to know of all this hatred directed toward you. It is not fair. You have worked so hard, you have accomplished so much, and yet, they hate you even more. You are just a man, Barack, and doubts creep in, and disappointments in moments of weakness.
It is disheartening. You are just a man, Barack. It is so hard to be strong and optimistic, knowing that your enemies are waiting for every wrong step you make, and they are ruthless.
Our America Mr. President.
And, yet, there is another America, an America of the future.
An America that is smart and kind, brave and compassionate.
An America that represents everything that makes this country great and exceptional.
People of all walks of life–these people are with you, Mr. President.
Old and young, wealthy and poor, black and white, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, immigrants who just came to America and the children of the Mayflower.
They are the reason you got the job, Mr. President.
They are the reason you work so hard.
There is a struggle going on in this country.
A struggle between the past and the future, between everything that is good in people and all that brings people down. A struggle for the future of America and the world.
Beautiful morning.
You made history, Mr. President. Do not give up now. You accomplished a lot, but more work needs to be done. The job is not yet done.
America–its people–are counting on you, Mr. President.
You are not alone.
Good night, Mr. President. Tomorrow will be a beautiful morning.
