Once people know that you can spend the money and that you're willing to spend the money and that you're set up to spend the money in politics, then your threat to spend the money is as convincing as actually spending it.

The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist.

When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn't just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms.

Worldwide, our oceans are warming, rising, and becoming dangerously acidic as a result of carbon pollution and climate change - endangering much that we hold dear.

The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever.

In the long term, a robust health IT network will support personalized treatment that adheres to proven best practices, and adapts to your personal health circumstances. The time will come when, whatever illness you may have, for your body type and health history, there will 'be an app for that' to keep you on your best path to wellness.

How arrogant - how very far from humility - would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us God will come and clean up our mess? Hope for a nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly - thats not aligned with either history or the text of the Bible.