Confronting a stadium audience you can't see the whites of their eyes. It's just an amorphous mass of noise and of course you can't see the alleged billions watching at home either so the degree to which you are intimidated is quite low.

My real fantasy if I was to drop out would be to live in a mobile home and be a hippie and drive around festivals and have millions of children - children with dreadlocks and nose rings - and play the flute.

Never in our country's history have we witnessed a natural disaster that has impacted so many people in such a wide area. In fact as of the writing of this column millions of people along the Gulf Coast have been displaced from their homes in a period of only five days.

Billions of people have seen and been influenced by movies in the short history of this industry.

Open markets offer the only realistic hope of pulling billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty while sustaining prosperity in the industrialized world.

Security is still the most important issue facing Washington state residents and millions of Americans - the security of having a job of access to affordable health care of a quality education and of protecting our homeland and defending our nation.

I also rise today in strong support of forward movement on the implementation of health information technology which has the potential to save the United States billions of dollars in health care costs each year.

It is imperative for the health and safety of millions of workers that we ensure that breathing systems needed for protection are widely available convenient and economical.

Because when we think about the real facts: 44 million Americans without health insurance millions without jobs a 50-year high on mortgage foreclosures an historic high the third year in a row on personal bankruptcies.

There should not be one new dime in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires as long as millions of children in America are poor hungry uneducated and without health coverage.

I think that the millions and millions of young Americans young Americans who have health care today who wouldn't have had it if the president hadn't acted are better off.

Most of the State of the Union will not be about Iraq. Most of the State of the Union will be about improving America's economy and providing greater access to health care for millions of American people including senior citizens.

I have health. I have a wonderful support system. I have the admiration of millions of strangers which I do not underestimate.

But you say does it represent change? The change is that we are fighting an insurance industry that has killed health reform for generations. They're spending tens of millions of dollars right now to defeat this bill and we're on the doorstep of winning a great victory for the American people.

Since 1994 lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have considered it politically risky to offer a plan to fix America's broken health care system. The American public though has paid the price for this silence as health care costs skyrocketed millions went uninsured and millions more grappled with financial insecurity and hardship.

The president has declared that the debate over government-controlled health care is over. That will come as news to the millions of Americans who will elect Mitt Romney so we can repeal Obamacare.

We must solve the problem in health care by curbing out-of-control costs that erode paychecks for working families and push quality coverage out of reach for millions of Americans.