As the nation at last confronts global warming, it is no time for denial, greed, cynicism or pessimism.

Vermont is such a small state, and the most money that's ever been spent in the history of political campaigns there is $2 million. That number is going to be surpassed many times. Vermont remains a "cheap state" for the Republican National Committee. So putting $5 or $10 million into Vermont - compared to New York or California or Illinois - that's small potatoes.

Politics is not a baseball game with winners or losers. What politics is about is whether we protect the needs of millions of people in this country who are hurting.

I went back to a small town in Poland where my dad grew up. It was a very traumatic experience for me as a young man to know that my father's family were killed by Nazis, killed by Hitler. And that left, you know, if not intellectually, at least an emotional part of me which said, God, we have got to do everything we can to end this kind of horrific racism or anti-Semitism. And I have spent much of my life trying to fight that.

When you talk about heroines and heroes, at the top of the list has got to be the single moms of America.

At the current $5.15 an hour, the federal minimum wage has become a poverty wage. A full-time worker with one child lives below the official poverty line.

We've had a number of economists supporting our legislation. And here's where we are. The American people can judge. Six largest financial institutions in America today have assets of roughly $10 trillion; equivalent to 58 percent of the GDP of the United States of America.