So the question now is not whether people are still hurting of course, people are still hurting. As

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President Obama s Speech To The United Nations General adventure alaska cruise private vacation Assembly New York City, New York 21 September 2011 Transcript Text (TCP)CHICAGO President Obama s Speech On Open Government adventure alaska cruise private vacation Partnership At Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York City, New York 20 September 2011 Transcript Text (TCP)CHICAGO
MRS. OBAMA :  Hi!  Thank you all so much.  Rest yourselves, because we need you rested because you're going to have to work really hard.  (Laughter.)  I want to thank Mayor Booker for that very kind introduction and for his leadership.  He has worked closely with me on several adventure alaska cruise private vacation of my initiatives.  He has been amazing energy, everything we need in this country.
And thanks to all of you for such a warm welcome.  It is great to be in New York.  (Applause.)  Yay for New York!  And it's great to be here with my husband, adventure alaska cruise private vacation because the truth is we rarely get to travel together anymore.  They separate us.  It's like you're adventure alaska cruise private vacation over there, you're adventure alaska cruise private vacation over there.  So this is sort of like our date night.  (Laughter.)  Yes.  And I would like to thank all of you for planning such a lovely, intimate evening for the two of us.  (Laughter.) adventure alaska cruise private vacation A little dinner, Alicia Keys.  Really nice touch.  (Laughter.)  Who knows what will happen?  (Laughter and applause.)
In all seriousness, it is a pleasure to be here to introduce my husband tonight.  I am used to talking about him because when I go out on the road folks always ask me about him.  They want to know how is he doing, adventure alaska cruise private vacation how is holding up, how is he different after two and a half years as President in the White House, how has he changed.  But the only difference that I can think of is that the salt is starting to catch up with the pepper adventure alaska cruise private vacation in his hair.  (Laughter.)  I think it's quite sexy, but it's coming.
But other than that other than that, I have to tell you that so much is constant about my husband.  From the time that I first met him back at our law firm in Chicago we got some Sidley people here tonight I know.  (Applause.)  You might have heard about our story this skinny adventure alaska cruise private vacation kid with the funny name, who had the audacity to ask his former mentor out on a date.  (Laughter.) adventure alaska cruise private vacation And then his idea of a date was taking me to a church basement.  (Laughter.)
Well, that guy back then was pretty special. adventure alaska cruise private vacation And I saw it in him then in that church basement in Chicago, when he was a community organizer, talking with a group of South-Siders about the world as it is and the world as it should be.  That was the first thing that touched me about him.  I saw the way those folks' lives mattered to him, all the way back then, and the way he connected with them.  That's what I fell in love with.
I saw it tore him up to see the laid-off workers, the single mothers, the senior citizens who had their communities turned upside down and didn't know where to turn.  And I saw how those stories stuck with him, and how he dedicated his life to fighting for folks like them.
And I have to tell you that I still see that connection, that fire.  Every single day it is still there.  And I shared this with some of you this afternoon at our gathering.  We had a good gathering today, didn't we, women?  (Applause.)  Fired up!  But I shared then, after a long day in the Oval Office, or after he s traveled throughout the country, and when the girls have gone to bed, Barack spends most night poring over stacks of letters from people he hears from from folks from all across the country, and he reads their stories word for word:  The woman dying of cancer adventure alaska cruise private vacation because her health insurance wouldn't cover her care.  The young person with so much promise and so few opportunities.  The man nearing retirement who just lost his job and is struggling to pay his family's bills.
And I see the concern on Barack's face, just like in that church basement.  And I hear that passion and determination.  He tells me, these folks are going through stuff you wouldn't believe.  He says, we have to fix this.  We have so much more to do.  And when he gets up in the morning, those people's stories are the first thing on his mind.  They're with him in meetings in the Oval Office, and as he continues to travel throughout the country.  They're with him when he's fighting to put folks back to work; when he's working to give our middle adventure alaska cruise private vacation class a renewed sense of security; when he is out there pushing Congress to finally pass a jobs bill.
I mean, that is the same connection that brought him back again and again to that church basement.  That's the same man who won me over all those years ago.  And that is the same man who so many of you worked so hard to elect as President of the United States.
Now, I want you all to remember that when I first came out on the campaign trail I asked you all for one thing.  I personally asked you all many of you here I said, if I'm going to let my husband do this crazy this and give him up to the country and to the world, that I'm going to need you to have his back.  You promised me that.  I said, you have to have his back. Well, tonight, four years later, I'm going to say it again, because the truth is he can't do this alone.  So I have to ask you again:  Do you have his back?  (Applause.)  Do you have his back?  Are you fired up?  Are you ready to go?
THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody!  Hello, New York!  (Applause.)  I'm in a New York state of mind.  (Applause.)  Thank you.  Thank you.  (Applause.)  What do you think about Michelle Obama?  (Applause.)  She's not bad.
Everybody please adventure alaska cruise private vacation have a seat.  Have a seat.  Did you notice how she's getting cuter?  (Laughter.)  She is remarkable, and it is the reason that I've got remarkable kids.  I have improved my gene pool.  (Laughter.)  And it is true, this is the closest we get to a date which I m going to have to fix in about 14 months. adventure alaska cruise private vacation (Laughter.)
It is wonderful to see all of you.  Thank you, so much, for being here tonight adventure alaska cruise private vacation in this spectacular setting.  There are a couple of people I want to make sure to acknowledge.  First of all, the remarkable Alicia Keys.  Thank you, so much, Alicia, for your performance.  (Applause.)  One of the finest public servants in the country, Mayor Cory Booker.  (Applause.)  The outstanding former Mayor of New York City, David Dinkins.  (Applause.)  The New York City public advocate Bill de Blasio.  (Applause.)  And my dear friend, the DNC Treasurer, Andy Tobias.  (Applause.)  We love Andy.
Now, the truth is, this is not my idea of a date night.  Normally, our dates don t end with me being before 400 of our closest friends.  But it is wonderful to be here.  And I'm here because I need your help.  I need your help, just like I needed your help in 2008.  In fact, I need your help to finish what we started in 2008.  (Applause.)
Back then, we started this campaign not because we thought it was a sure thing I just want to remind everybody of that.  The odds were not good.  This was not going to be a cakewalk.  My name was Barack Hussein Obama.  (Laughter.)  You didn't need a poll to know that might be an issue.  (Laughter.)  But we forged ahead because we had an idea about what this country is, what it has been, and what it can be.
Most of the people in this room, many of our parents, our grandparents we grew up with a faith in an America where hard work and responsibility paid off, and if you stepped up, and if you did your job, and if you were loyal to your company, that loyalty would be rewarded with a decent salary and good benefits you might get a raise.  And you had an assurance that life would be better for your kids and your grandkids.
Over the last decade over the last couple of decades, that faith was shaken. adventure alaska cruise private vacation Seemed as if the world's adventure alaska cruise private vacation changed.  The deck kept getting stacked against middle-class Americans, and nobody in Washington seemed willing or able to do anything about it.  And in 2007, all of this culminated in a once in a lifetime adventure alaska cruise private vacation economic crisis, a crisis that's been much worse and much longer than your average recession something that most of us have never seen in our lifetimes.  And from the time I took office, we knew that because this crisis had been building for years, it was going to take us years to fully recover.
So the question now is not whether people are still hurting of course, people are still hurting.  As Michelle was saying, I read letters and emails every night. adventure alaska cruise private vacation I talk to people when I'm out on the road.  Their stories are heartbreaking men and women who've poured their lives into a small business, perhaps a business that's been in their family for generations; suddenly closed.  Folks who have to cross off items from the grocery list so that they can pay for gas to get to the job if they've got a job.  Parents who postpone retirement so that their children don't have to drop out of college.  Fathers who write to me and say, do you know what it's like to have to come home and explain to your family that you've lost your job, and then spend month after month looking for a job, and those resumes go unanswered, and how you start losing confidence in yourself and you don t want to look your kids in the eye?
The question is not whether this country is going through hard times.  The question is where does this country go next?  We can go back to the ideas we tried in the last decade where corporations got to write their own rules and the most fortunate among us got all of our tax breaks, and jobs got shipped overseas, and incomes and wages flat-lined as the cost of everything went up, and this society became less equal, and opportunity