Political Quotes

“I rise today to offer my deepest condolences to the people of Japan, and to reaffirm that the United States stands ready to assist the country and its people in this time of tremendous need. On Friday, March 11, the world watched in horror as a devastating 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the northeastern coast of Japan, triggering a devastating tsunami that sent a 30-foot high wall of water hurtling into coastal towns and leaving complete destruction in its wake. As a Senator from California, which has far too often experienced the devastation of earthquakes, I was horrified by the magnitude of this event. In a stunning development, scientists are now saying that the quake caused the island of Japan to shift by 8 feet and the Earth's axis to move by 4 inches. In Japanese cities such as Sendai and Minami Sanriku, entire communities and countless lives vanished in an instant. In Minami Sanriku alone, 10,000 members of a population of 17,000 remain unaccounted for. The force of the tsunami generated by the quake was so great that waves traveled across the Pacific Ocean at more than 500 miles per hour, slamming into Hawaii and cities along the California and Oregon coasts. Today, we know that an estimated 4,277 lives have been confirmed lost--a figure that will undoubtedly rise--and that hundreds of thousands have been displaced.…”