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Israel Has Legitimate Concerns About Its Security Relative To Iran. I Mean, You Have A Large Country With A Significant Military That Has Proclaimed That Israel Shouldn't Exist, That Has Denied The Holocaust, That Has Financed Hezbollah, And As A Consequence, There Are Missiles That Are Pointed Towards Tel Aviv. There Are Very Good Reasons Why Israelis Are Nervous About Iran's Position In The World Generally.

-Barack Obama

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Israel Has Legitimate Concerns

Barack Obama

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Israel Has Legitimate Concerns About Its Security Relative To Iran. I Mean, You Have A Large Country With A Significant Military That Has Proclaimed That Israel Shouldn't Exist, That Has Denied The Holocaust, That Has Financed Hezbollah, And As A Consequence, There Are Missiles That Are Pointed Towards Tel Aviv. There Are Very Good Reasons Why Israelis Are Nervous About Iran's Position In The World Generally.

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Native American

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Leather Jackets

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Broken Promises

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Keeping Promises

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John Mccain Likes To Say That He'll Follow Bin Laden To The Gates Of Hell - But He Won't Even Go To The Cave Where He Lives.

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But We Reject The Belief That America Must Choose Between Caring For The Generation That Built This Country And Investing In The Generation That Will Build Its Future.

Buy Health Insurance, Or Go To Jail.

We Cannot Stop Every Act Of Senseless Violence. We Cannot Know Every Evil That Lurks In Troubled Minds. But If We Can Prevent Even One Tragedy Like This, Save Even One Life, Spare Other Families What These Families Are Going Through, Surely We've Got An Obligation To Try.

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You Didn't Build That. Somebody Else Made That Happen.

Presidential Election

At The Moment That We Persuade A Child, Any Child, To Cross That Threshold, That Magic Threshold Into A Library, We Change Their Lives Forever, For The Better

I Think Dona;d Trump Is Sincere In Wanting To Be A Successful President And Moving This Country Forward And I Don't Think Any President Ever Comes In Saying To Himself "i Want To Figure Out How To Make People Angry Or Alienate Half The Country."

Our Combat Mission Is Ending, But Our Commitment To Iraq's Future Is Not.

You Look At Something Like Health Care, The Affordable Care Act. And For All The Controversy, We Now Have 20 Million People Who Have Health Insurance Who Didn't Have It. It's Actually Proven To Be More Effective, Cheaper Than Even Advocates Like Me Expected.

Many Of You Know That I Got My Name, Barack, From My Father. What You May Not Know Is Barack Is Actually Swahili For 'that One.' And I Got My Middle Name From Somebody Who Obviously Didn't Think I'd Ever Run For President.

I Think It Is Important For Europe To Understand That Even Though I Am President And George Bush Is Not President, Al Qaeda Is Still A Threat.

[the Democrats] Have Got To Do A Better Job Of Showing Up.

Our Journey Is Not Complete Until Our Gay Brothers And Sisters Are Treated Like Anyone Else Under The Law.

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For Decades, We've Been Told That It Doesn't Make Economic Sense To Switch To Renewable Energy. Today, That's No Longer True.

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We Will Not Apologise For Our Way Of Life.

I'm Kind Of A Night Owl.

So Long As Our Relationship Is Defined By Our Differences, We Will Empower Those Who Sow Hatred Rather Than Peace, Those Who Promote Conflict Rather Than The Cooperation That Can Help All Of Our People Achieve Justice And Prosperity. This Cycle Of Suspicion And Discord Must End.

Just From A Political Perspective, Do You Think The President Of The United States Going Into Re-election Wants Gas Prices To Go Up Higher? Look, Here's The Bottom Line With Respect To Gas Prices: I Want Gas Prices Lower Because They Hurt Families.

If Some Of These [republican] Folks Were Around When Columbus Set Sail, They Must Have Been Founding Members Of The 'flat Earth Society.' They Would Not Believe That The World Was Round.

The Easiest Way To Save Money Is To Waste Less Energy.

There Isn't Anyone Who Can't Serve ... Nobody Who Can't Help Somebody Else.

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I Would Meet Directly With The Leadership In Iran.

One Thing You Learn In This Job [being Us President] Is That Even If Something's Not Your Fault, You're Still Responsible. And That's How It Should Be.

Simple Exchanges Can Break Down Walls Between Us, For When People Come Together And Speak To One Another And Share A Common Experience, Then Their Common Humanity Is Revealed. We Are Reminded That We're Joined Together By Our Pursuit Of A Life That's Productive And Purposeful, And When That Happens Mistrust Begins To Fade And Our Smaller Differences No Longer Overshadow The Things That We Share. And That's Where Progress Begins.

Common Humanity

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Mutual Interest

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We Should Raise The Minimum Wage So That No One Who Works Full Time Has To Live In Poverty

Whatever We Think Of The Past, We Must Not Be Prisoners To It.

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 Shortcuts Or Settling For Less. It Has Not Been The Path For The Faint-hearted, For Those Who 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.

Men Have To Take More Responsibility. Men Have To Intervene

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If You Have Health Care, My Plan Will Lower Your Premiums. If You Don't, You'll Be Able To Get The Same Kind Of Coverage That Members Of Congress Give Themselves.

We Are Engaging In The Diplomatic Efforts That Are Required Within Iraq Among The Shia, The Sunni And The Kurd, Among Friends, Like Egypt, And Turkey And Saudi Arabia, But Also Enemies Like Iran And Syria. They Have To Have Buy-in Into That Process.

Al Qaeda Is Still A Threat. We Cannot Pretend Somehow That Because Barack Hussein Obama Got Elected As President, Suddenly Everything Is Going To Be Ok.

People Need To Remember We Are The Governing Party Because We Have Diversity Of Opinion In Our Party. We're Not Pure. We Have Moderates And We Have More Progressives.

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As Tough As Things Have Been, I Am Convinced You Are Tougher. I've Seen Your Passion And I've Seen Your Service. I've Seen You Engage And I've Seen You Turn Out In Record Numbers. I've Heard Your Voices Amplified By Creativity And A Digital Fluency That Those Of Us In Older Generations Can Barely Comprehend. I've Seen A Generation Eager, Impatient Even, To Step Into The Rushing Waters Of History And Change Its Course.

For People Who Have Health Insurance, We Can Provide Health Insurance Reforms That Make The Insurance They Have More Secure. And We Can Do That Mostly By Using Money That Every Expert Agrees Is Being Wasted And Is Currently In The Existing Health Care System.

One Of The Things That I've Learned, And I Think We've All Learned, Is That We Are Not Going To Get The Kind Of Decisive, Permanent Victories In This Fight Against Terrorism That We Would Get From Fighting Another Country. We're Not Going To Get That Macarthur/emperor Moment, Because By Definition, Even After Decimating Al Qaeda In The Fata, Even After Taking Out [osama] Bin Laden There's Still People There Who Have Both The Interest And The Capacity If We Don't Maintain Vigilance To Strike Against The United States.

But Race Is An Issue That I Believe This Nation Cannot Afford To Ignore Right Now. We Would Be Making The Same Mistake That Reverend Wright Made In His Offending Sermons About America - To Simplify And Stereotype And Amplify The Negative To The Point That It Distorts Reality.

The Challenges Posed By Threats Like Terrorism, Proliferation, And Cyber Attacks Are Not Going Away Any Time Soon, And For Our Intelligence Community To Be Effective Over The Long Haul, We Must Maintain The Trust Of The American People And People Around The World.

I Will Continue To Urge Creditors To Take The Steps Needed To Put Greece On A Path Towards A Durable Economic Recovery Because It's In All Of Our Interests That Greece Succeeds.

What Is Portrayed As High-minded Positions On Issues Sometimes Is Just Designed To Carve Out Some Of Their Commercial Interests.

This Is American Leadership At Its Best: We Stand With People Who Fight For Their Own Freedom, And We Rally Other Nations On Behalf Of Our Common Security And Common Humanity.

No Job In America Should Go Unfilled Because Somebody Doesn't Have The Right Skills To Get That Job, Nobody. So, If There's A Job Open, We Should Train Those Folks Right Away So That They Can Do The Job.

I Don't Want To Make Promises, Not Knowing What The Situation's Going To Be Three Or Four Years Out.

If You Looked At Their Cable Bill, Their Telephone, Their Cell Phone Bill, Other Things They're Spending Money On, It May Turn Out That, It's Just That They Haven't Prioritized Health Care.

We Can Make Sure That People Who Don't Have Health Insurance Can Buy Into An Insurance Pool That Gives Them Better Bargaining Power.

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Common Humanity

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This Victory Alone Is Not The Change We Seek; It Is Only The Chance For Us To Make That Change.

I Will Set Big Goals For This Country As President - Some So Large That The Technology To Reach Them Does Not Yet Exist.""i Will Recruit New Teachers And Make New Investments In Rural Schools, We'll Connect All Of America To 21st Century Technology And Telecommunications.

We Had A Farewell Dinner For Some Of My Senior Staff, And Generally Everybody Likes To Talk About How Cool I Was.

I Feel Good When I'm Engaged In What I Think Are The Core Issues Of The Society, And Those Core Issues To Me Are What's Happening To Poor Folks In This Society.

All Too Rarely Do I Hear People Asking Just What It Is That We've Done To Make So Many Children's Hearts So Hard, Or What Collectively We Might Do To Right Their Moral Compass - What Values We Must Live By.

I Don't Expect To Get 100 Percent Of What I Want, But What We Can't Do Is Go Back To The Kind Of Top-down Economics That Doesn't Work.

The Forces That Divide Us Are Not As Strong As Those That Unite Us.

We Need Fathers To Step Up, To Realize That Their Job Does Not End At Conception; That What Makes You A Man Is Not The Ability To Have A Child But The Courage To Raise One.

The Bottom Line Is This - Whereas Iran Was Steadily Expanding Its Nuclear Program, We Have Now Cut Off Every Single Path That Iran Could Have Used To Build A Bomb.

Since 1981, After Our Nations Severed Diplomatic Relations, We've Worked Through A International Tribunal To Resolve Various Claims Between Our Countries. The United States And Iran Are Now Settling A Long-standing Iranian Government Claim Against The United States Government. Iran Will Be Returned Its Own Funds, Including Appropriate Interest But Much Less Than The Amount Iran Sought. With The Nuclear Deal Done, Prisoners Released, The Time Was Right To Resolve This Dispute As Well.

There Are Values That Transcend Race Or Culture, That Move Us Forward, And There's An Obligation For All Of Us Individually As Well As Collectively To Take Responsibility To Make Those Values Lived.

If We're Serious About Building An Economy That Lasts, We Have Got To Get Serious About Education. We Are Going To Have To Pick Up Our Games And Raise Our Standards.

My Fellow Americans, We Are And Always Will Be A Nation Of Immigrants. We Were Strangers Once, Too.

Undocumented Workers

I Decided To Become A Community Organizer ... Change Won't Come From The Top, I Would Say. Change Will Come From A Mobilized Grass Roots.

Like Joe Biden And So Many Other Americans, I've Lost People I Love Deeply To Cancer. I've Heard Often From Those Whose Loved Ones Are Suffering From Alzheimer's, Addiction, And Other Debilitating Diseases. Their Heartbreak Is Real, And So We Have A Responsibility To Respond With Real Solutions.

Filibuster Has Long Tradition, But Used To Harm Civil Rights.

We All Want The Greek People To Prosper, To Be Able To Provide A Good Life For Their Families And Their Children. That Would Be Good For Greece, That Would Be Good For The European Union, Good For The United States, And Ultimately, Good For The World.

How You Staff, Particularly The Chief Of Staff, The National Security Adviser, Your White House Counsel, How You Set Up A Process In The System To Surface Information And Generate Options For A President, Understanding That Ultimately The President Is Going To Be The Final Decision-maker. That's Something That Has To Be Attended To Right Away.

As Long As Countries Like China Keep Going All In On Clean Energy, So Must We.

I Think That When It Comes To Social Security, All Of Us Want To Make Sure That Our Senior Citizens Can Retire With Dignity And Respect. And Everybody Has To Be Open-minded In Thinking How Do We Firm Up A System That, In Fact, Is Going To Be In Difficulty In The Coming Years.

Nobody Is Listening To Your Telephone Calls.

That's Part Of What I Tried To Describe To My Team And Supporters After The Election, There Was A Lot Of Disappointment.

The Future Is Ours To Win. But To Get There We Can't Just Stand Still.

While We May Not Live To See The Full Realization Of Our Ambition, We Will Have The Satisfaction Of Knowing That The World We Leave To Our Children Will Be Better Off For What We Did.

The Day After The Attack, Governor, I Stood In The Rose Garden And I Told The American People And The World That We Are Going To Find Out Exactly What Happened. That This Was An Act Of Terror And I Also Said That We're Going To Hunt Down Those Who Committed This Crime.

My Strong Preference Has Always Been To Legislate When I Can Get Legislation Done.

[we] Are Focused On Protecting And Defending Our Common Security And Upholding A Rules-based Order That Undergirds The Peace And Prosperity Of The Region And The World. In This Work, We Are Grateful For Our Continued Partnership With Singapore.

What I Want To Try To Do Is Unify The Two Wings Of The Democratic Party. What's Considered The More Progressive Wing Of The Democratic Party - The More Centrist Wing Of The Party. I Think We Can Craft An Approach That Is More American, Pro-worker, Pro-business, Pro-growth.

[we Should Beware] That Our Democracy Stays Healthy. And Making Sure That We Maintain That Sense Of Solidarity.

So Americans Understand The Costs Of War. Yet As A Country, We Will Never Tolerate Our Security Being Threatened, Nor Stand Idly By When Our People Have Been Killed. We Will Be Relentless In Defense Of Our Citizens And Our Friends And Allies. We Will Be True To The Values That Make Us Who We Are.

I Think That Where I've Gotten Frustrated During The Course Of My Presidency Has Never Been Because I Was Getting Pushed Too Hard By Activists To See The Justness Of A Cause Or The Essence Of An Issue.

Above All, Our Freedom Endures Because Of The Men And Women In Uniform Who Defend It.

I Started As A Community Organizer. Every One Of My Campaigns Was Premised On Getting New People Involved. And If There's A Theme In My Public Career It's That If Ordinary People Get Involved Then Good Things Happen. So I Want To See The Democratic Party Move In That Direction. And What That Means Is That We Aren't Just Micro-targeting To Eke Out Presidential Victories; It Means That We're Showing Up In Places Where Right Now We're Not Winning A Lot.

Now, Because He Knows That His Economic Theories Don't Work, He's Been Spending These Last Few Days Calling Me Every Name In The Book. Lately He's Called Me A Socialist For Wanting To Roll-back The Bush Tax Cuts For The Wealthiest Americans So We Can Finally Give Tax Relief To The Middle Class. I Don't Know What's Next. By The End Of The Week He'll Be Accusing Me Of Being A Secret Communist Because I Shared My Toys In Kindergarten. I Shared My Peanut Butter And Jelly Sandwich.

I Will Veto Any Effort To Get Rid Of Those Automatic Spending Cuts To Domestic And Defense Spending. There Will Be No Easy Off Ramps On This One.

We Do Not Want To Keep Our Troops In Afghanistan. We See No Military - We Seek No Military Bases There. It Is Agonizing For America To Lose Our Young Men And Women. It Is Costly And Politically Difficult To Continue This Conflict. We Would Gladly Bring Every Single One Of Our Troops Home If We Could Be Confident That There Were Not Violent Extremists In Afghanistan And Now Pakistan Determined To Kill As Many Americans As They Possibly Can.

Part Of What We Have To Do A Better Job Of, If Our Democracy Is To Function In A Complicated Diverse Society Like This, Is To Teach Our Kids Enough Critical Thinking To Be Able To Sort Out What Is True And What Is False, What Is Contestable And What Is Incontestable. And We Seem To Have Trouble With That. And Our Political System Doesn't Help.

I've Been Fighting With Acorn, Alongside Acorn, On Issues You Care About, My Entire Career.

Donald Trump Will Be The Next President, The 45th President Of The United States. And It Will Be Up To Him To Set Up A Team That He Thinks Will Serve Him Well And Reflect His Policies. And Those Who Didn't Vote For Him Have To Recognize That That's How Democracy Works. That's How This System Operates.

Why Can't I Just Eat My Waffle?

True Leadership Will Not Be Measured By The Ability To Muzzle Dissent, Or To Intimidate And Harass Political Opponents At Home. The People Of The World Want Change. They Will Not Long Tolerate Those Who Are On The Wrong Side Of History.

We Will Kill Bin Laden. We Will Crush Al Qaeda. That Has To Be Our Biggest National Security Priority.

To Me The Question Right Now Is: How Do I Close That First Three-quarters Of The Achievement Gap, Education Gap, Wealth Gap? What Gives Me The Best Chance To Do That? And I'm Pretty Darn Sure That If America Is A Just Society And Treating People Well Right Now, Irrespective Of Past Wrongs, That I'm Going To Close A Big Chunk Of That Gap. I've Seen It.

I Was Always Amused That People Were Either Skeptical Or Surprised That I Would Choose A Hillary Clinton As A Secretary Of State. To My Mind, Having Somebody Smart, Tough, Capable With Her Own Stature, Who Could Travel Around The World And Command The Stage, Was A Huge Asset.

It Is Absolutely Important That We Have A Unified Alliance And That We Explain To The Russians That You Cannot Be A 21st-century Superpower, Or Power, And Act Like A 20th-century Dictatorship.

I Promised To Bring Change To Washington. The Underlying Reason For The Economic Mess We're In Has Been Building For Years. It's A Fundamental Imbalance In Which The Top 1 Percent Now Gets Almost A Quarter Of All National Income. We Haven't Seen Income And Wealth This Concentrated Since The Late Nineteen Twenties, And We All Know What Happened Then - The Great Depression. We'll Never Really Get Out Of The Gravitational Pull Of The Great Recession Until We Fix This Basic Problem.

Great Depression

Who Is Barack Obama? Contrary To The Rumors You Have Heard, I Was Not Born In A Manger. I Was Actually Born On Krypton And Sent Here By My Father Jor-el To Save The Planet Earth. Many Of You Know That I Got My Name, Barack, From My Father. What You May Not Know Is Barack Is Actually Swahili For 'that One.' And I Got My Middle Name From Somebody Who Obviously Didn't Think I'd Ever Run For President. If I Had To Name My Greatest Strength, I Guess It Would Be My Humility. Greatest Weakness, It's Possible That I'm A Little Too Awesome.

We Could Come Together, Democrats And Republicans, To Find Practical, Commonsense Solutions To Health Care, To Education, To Energy Issues, Because Although I'm A Proud Democrat, I'm A Prouder American. And I Think All Of Us Believe, Regardless Of Our Party Affiliations, That This Is A Critical Time, Where We've Got To Solve Big Problems.

Climate Change Constitutes A Serious Threat To Global Security, An Immediate Risk To Our National Security, And, Make No Mistake, It Will Impact How Our Military Defends Our Country.

Each Path To Knowledge Involves Different Rules And These Rules Are Not Interchangeable.

The President And The Executive Branch Are Always Going To Have Greater Latitude And Greater Authority When It Comes To Protecting America Because Sometimes You Just Have To Respond Quickly And Not Everything That Is A Danger Can Be Publicized And Be Subject To Open Debate, But There Have To Be Some Guardrails.

[young People] Are Showing Enormous And Entrepreneurship And Working With Each Other Across Borders.

Entrepreneurship

America Is Not The Crude Stereotype Of A Self-interested Empire. Given Our Interdependence, Any World Order That Elevates One Nation Or Group Of People Over Another Will Inevitably Fail.

The Government Has To Treat All Citizens Equally. I Am A Strong Supporter Not Of A Weak Version Of Civil Unions, But Of A Strong Version, In Which The Rights That Are Conferred At The Federal Level To Persons Who Are Part Of The Same-sex Union Are Compatible. When It Comes To Federal Rights, The Over 1,100 Rights That Right Now Are Not Being Given To Same-sex Couples, I Think That's Unacceptable.

Let's Also Say That The Justice Department And The Courts Are Making Sure, As I've Said In A Speech Before, That When Jamal Sends His Résumé In, He's Getting Treated The Same As When Johnny Sends His Résumé In.now, Are We Going To Have Suddenly The Same Number Of Ceos, Billionaires, Etc., As The White Community? In 10 Years? Probably Not, Maybe Not Even In 20 Years. But I Guarantee You That We Would Be Thriving, We Would Be Succeeding. We Wouldn't Have Huge Numbers Of Young African American Men In Jail.

I've Been Talking About Things Like Reversing The Rise Of Inequality And Strengthening Social Mobility,since Before It Was Cool.

As A Product Of History And Faith, Jewish Americans Have Helped To Open Our Eyes To Injustice, To People In Need, And To The Simple Idea That We Ought To Recognize Ourselves In The Struggle Of Our Fellow Men And Women.

You Can't Manage [country] The Way You Would Manage A Family Business.

Our Journey Is Not Complete Until All Our Children... Know That They Are Cared For And Cherished And Always Safe From Harm.

What Is True, Though, Is Now We've Got A Bunch Of Videos That Whatever Side Of The Issue You're On, Raises The Temperature On These Issues And Makes People Really Focused .

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