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" Frederick Douglass had to teach himself how to read before standing up to defeat slavery. "

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" When it comes to serious cuts to major programs like Medicaid, the American people are not calling for leadership but magic. They want cuts with no pain. "

" The power of the silent filibuster to distort Senate politics is now accepted on Capitol Hill and by the press as normal and not worth mentioning. Let me be the skunk at this political garden party and say this stinks. Representative government was not designed to work this way by the Founding Fathers. "

" In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush, but still lost the election. The Supreme Court's ruling in Florida gave Bush that pivotal state, and doomed Gore to lose the Electoral College. That odd scenario - where the candidate with the most votes loses - has happened three times in U.S. history. "

" Sometimes you have to understand that you push ahead, there's going to be a lot of flak, there's going to be a lot of dogs barking, but the wagon train moves ahead. "

" If Mitt Romney defeats President Obama in his bid for reelection on Tuesday, it will mark the success of one of the most deeply cynical political campaigns in American history. It is hard to beat an incumbent no matter the economic climate. "

" I'm not a predictable black liberal. "

" Gun-related violence and murders are concentrated among blacks and Latinos in big cities. "

" The Republicans want to turn Medicare into a voucher plan that will end guaranteed coverage of medical bills for the elderly. "

" As President Obama is inaugurated for a second time, the biggest political surprise is that gun control is now key to his political legacy. "

" Democrats cannot win elections without capturing the votes of independent-minded swing voters. And that is where writing off the Tea Party as a bunch of racist kooks becomes self-destructive. The Tea Party outrage over health-care reform, deficit spending and entitlements run amok is no fringe concern. "

" Years ago, NPR tried to stop me from going on "The Factor." When I refused, they insisted that I not identify myself as an NPR journalist. I asked them if they thought people did not know where I appeared on the air as a daily talk show host, national correspondent and news analyst. They refused to budge. "

" The 112th Congress passed only 220 laws, the lowest number enacted by any Congress. In 1948, when President Truman called the 80th Congress a 'Do-Nothing' Congress, it had passed more than 900 laws. "

" As the 2012 elections approach the finish line, the chatter among columnists and political reporters is about upcoming books that take readers inside the campaigns, cutting-edge efforts to micro-target voters on Internet social applications, the enormous money flowing through super-PACs, and extreme political polarization. "

" The question now is does Obama have any hope of raising money? I don't think he'll raise it out of the New York people, I don't think he's going to raise it out the Hollywood people, so where's the money going to come from for Barack Obama? "

" Cable would not translate into the public radio universe. "

" Beyond budget fights, the Obama second-term agenda was supposed to be about passing comprehensive immigration reform. "

" In the last 100 years only Presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford lost their bids for reelection. President Lyndon Johnson did not run for a second term. "

" Alaska and Montana are not in the south but they definitely form part of the crimson tide of red states where Republicans are dominant. "

" When I'm on TV, I'm often talking to a conservative host. I may have another conservative arguing with me. You've got very limited time, and you're using 'sound-bite' type language. "

" The teachers' unions that block school reform have done serious damage to the union brand. The public no longer views unions as their friend, much less their champion. They view them as corrupt, intransigent and more interested in protecting their political clout within the Democratic Party than protecting their members or even school children. "

" NPR editors and journalists found themselves caught in a game of trying to please a leadership team who did not want to hear stories on the air about conservatives, the poor, or anyone who didn't fit their profitable design of NPR as the official voice of college-educated, white, liberal-leaning, upper-income America. "

" NPR fired me for telling the truth. The truth is that I worry when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims. This is not a bigoted statement. It is a statement of my feelings, my fears after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by radical Muslims. "

" Even after they fired me, called me a bigot and publicly advised me to only share my thoughts with a psychiatrist, I did not call for defunding NPR. I am a journalist, and NPR is an important platform for journalism. "

" The 2012 presidential campaign's turn away from the classic, straight-up, American election - where the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide wins - is another sad reminder of the extreme political polarization distorting today's politics. No one talks about a 50-state strategy for winning the presidency these days. "

" Yesterday NPR fired me for telling the truth. The truth is that I worry when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims. This is not a bigoted statement. It is a statement of my feelings, my fears after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by radical Muslims. "

" For the first time since 2007 there is political momentum behind fixing the immigration system. President Obama in his State of the Union speech reached out to the right-wing by saying illegal immigrants seeking citizenship will have to pay taxes, learn English and get in line behind people who are trying to enter the United States legally. "

" There is no debating that, under President Obama, corporate profits are at their highest levels in decades. "

" Republicans get a lot of money from big business, but they are not tied to the union dollar. As a result they have been aggressive advocates of school reform, charter schools and vouchers for private schools. "

" President Obama's proposal to raise the top rate to 39 percent is equal to the rate under President Clinton in the 1990s when Wall Street reached record high levels and the economy produced lots of jobs. "

" When you stop and look at so much of the kind of activism that has been triggered, the Tea Party and the like, as a result of Obama's efforts - TARP, the stimulus package, and now the health care reform - there is a lot of sense this government is changing. "