The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

If American men are obsessed with money American women are obsessed with weight. The men talk of gain the women talk of loss and I do not know which talk is the more boring.

It is money money money! Not ideas not principles but money that reigns supreme in American politics.

I think there's a danger of a being typecast as the all-American mom forever.

Now if you're Al Gore you can afford $10 a pop for squiggly-pig-tailed fluorescent light bulbs. But if you're mainstream America two or three kids mom and dad working outside the home that's not a very good deal.

You know that I am living proof that the American Dream is real. Growing up our congressman cut through government bureaucratic red tape to help my mom buy our first house. That's the kind of congressman I'll be.

I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film TV theatre in order to make it accessible to people.

President Obama likes to talk about the Buffett Rule. Well here's a Buffett Rule that all Americans should be able to support: mom and pop businesses should not pay a higher tax rate than Fortune 500 corporations like Warren Buffett's.

This is the place where anybody - like an African American kid raised by a single mom - can be president.

I'm an immigrant kid who came to America from India when I was very young and grew up in New York City with a single mom and really was influenced by all of those immigrant cultures bumping up against each other.