My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountain top and pointed the way to the Promised Land. Yes we can!

By so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we first got here. And I'm hopeful we'll build on the progress we've made in the years to come.

The problem is that the way [President] Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents - number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome - so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back. [That's] $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

I warn young people that I interact with about this - you get into unrealistic expectations where you think that, "Oh, we're gonna eliminate racism like that. After Obama's elected how could there be any racism?".

The United States does not have a monopoly on crazy people. It's not the only country that has psychosis. And yet we kill each other in these mass shootings at rates that are exponentially higher than anyone else. Well, what's the difference? The difference is that these guys can stack up a bunch of ammunition in their houses, and that's sort of par for the course.

This week I've travelled more than 15,000 miles from America to China to Burma to Australia. I have no idea what time it is right now.