Everyone in Congress wants our country to lead, to build alliances, to help American companies compete, and to protect the interests and security of our citizens. You can't have it both ways. You can't expect others to follow if you can't lead, and you can't lead if you don't pay your way.
President after president has said energy independence is critical. But then you have the EPA tasked to go after American companies producing coal and penalizing them. You can't have it both ways.
One of the characteristics of North American culture is that you can always start again. You can always move forward, cross a border of a state or a city or a county, and move West, most of the time West. You leave behind guilt, past traditions, memories.
If you are serious about American culture and you are serious about Afro-American culture, you are in a lot of pain. You are not - you are not smiling about it.
I suppose you could say I love outlaw American culture.
The new American dream is one of responsibility. What is the bottom-line number that you're going to be able to pay back toward a student loan responsibly if you're doing it yourself after you have a job? That dictates the amount of money you can borrow. That dictates the school you can go to, if you can even go to a four-year college at all.
When Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy.
No, I've always been impressed with the tremendous resilience of the American economy. I think over the years, over the decades, it's demonstrated this tremendous ability to take severe body blows, if you will, and bounce back.
I am all in favor of growing the American economy and engaging in trade with the world, but not at the expense of American workers. The North American Free Trade Agreement is a perfect example of this. Ask the textile workers of North Carolina how NAFTA worked out for them - if you can find any.
If you look at national economies today, for example, the American economy, the European economy, the Indians, the Chinese, we're all tied together. If one of them sinks, the rest are going to sink with them and if one floats, the rest are lifted up. I find that very interesting.
When you work in the White House you talk to the White House staff all day, so you're talking to the guy who handles the congressional liaison and the guy who's handling domestic politics and the guy who's handling the American economy and so forth.
Once you run current-account deficits, you depend on the kindness of strangers. This might be the beginning of the end of the American empire.
So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and... Wanda Sykes and John Legend... we're adding to the database that scholars can then draw from to generalize about the complexity of the American experience. And that's the contribution that family trees make to broader scholarship.
The thing that happened with the music business, there are no stores anymore where you can buy music. It's all an online business now, and that's, you know - the bookstore culture is a very vibrant part of the American experience that we're very reluctant to see go away.
I did tell the census man I was white, and I'm telling you, I started getting offers for the black American Express card in the mail.
I'm a firm believer in karma. By doing good, good things eventually find you. I don't have an American Express Black Card, but I like to think that I would if I could fill it with karma points.
They're pushing credit cards. They don't take Visa, but they do take American Express, or they don't take this one, but they take that one, or you'd better bring this one, or if you forget who you are, look on your credit card; it will be there.
I believe in the traditional American family, and I will do everything that I can to promote, you know, families.
When I'm making an American film, it's more safe because there are so many people on the set to watch me. Whatever I do, they say, 'What are you doing!? Tell me first!' There are so many restrictions.
I wouldn't mind being in an American film for a laugh, but I certainly don't want to be in Thingy Blah Blah 3, if you know what I mean.
