I've been saying for a couple of years now that people need to let God out of the Sunday morning box that He doesn't want to just be with you for an hour or two on Sunday morning and then put back in His box to sit there until you have an emergency but He wants to invade your Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday.
And I think it's a prudent responsible way given the scale of the emergency the scale of the damage still facing America that we finance these additional support for the unemployed as well as the support for small business. We think there's a good case for doing it now. We want to do it in an overall fiscally responsible way.
No one should have to choose between medicine and other necessities. No one should have to use the emergency room every time a child gets sick. And no one should have to live in constant fear that a medical problem will become a financial crisis.
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.
Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill and I know it's a challenge to the moral imagination.
Nobody with an IQ higher than emergency-room temperature could ever believe that 'death panels' would be appointed to nudge the elderly toward euthanasia. Yet for idle entertainment it's hard to beat Sarah Palin's ignorant nattering on the subject.
When my dad was badly weakened by the flu and my mom wanted to call an ambulance to take him to the emergency room he wouldn't go unless he could shave first and change into a nice shirt and a pair of slacks.
One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
But on second thought after I decreed the state of emergency I came to the conclusion that that was impossible to achieve without bloodshed because the street protesters were full of anger and nearly out of control. This is why I thought we needed to find another way out.
I feel the 21st century is another new age. Not only can we collaborate again with nature but we have to. It's an emergency.