The president was not available to confirm whether he had tried out the Segway before.

Even railroad magnate J. P. Morgan, the consummate capitalist, understood that corporations must never become so big that they "inhibit freedom to the point where efficiency [is] endangered."

President Abraham Lincoln foresaw terrible trouble. Shortly before his death, he warned that "corporations have been enthroned . . . . An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people . . . until wealth is aggregated in a few hands . . . and the republic is destroyed."

In 1997, fifty-one of the world's hundred largest economies were corporations, not countries. The top five hundred corporations controlled forty-two percent of the world's wealth.

Atilio A. Boron: Looking at the recent US policies in Iraq, What do you think was the real goal behind this war?
Noam Chomsky: Well, we can be quite confident on one thing. The reasons we are given can't possibly be the reasons. And we know that, because they are internally contradictory.
If people think they are threatened with destruction by an enemy who´s already attacked them it is likely that they'll go to war.
So what's the next choice? Well the next choice has to meet similar conditions. It has to be valuable enough to attack, and it has to be weak enough to be defenseless.
One of the more recent studies, a University of Maryland study covering from Morocco to the Gulf to Lebanon, the entire area, shows that a very large majority of the population wants religious leaders to have a greater role in government. It also shows that approximately another 95% believe that the sole US interest in the region is taking its oil, strengthening Israel and humiliating the Arabs. That means near unanimity.

Few things are more dangerous than empires pursuing their own interest in the belief that they are doing humanity a favour.
the present US policy is more unpopular than the policy of any other US government has ever been, and probably than that of any other great power has ever been.

There is a genuine case to be made that there are governments so bad that their disappearance will be a net gain for the world. But this can never justify the danger of creating a world power that is not interested in a world it does not understand, but is capable of intervening decisively with armed force whenever anybody does anything that Washington does not like.

The SOTU is the most vetted speech a president gives. It’s not credible to believe Bush and all the bigwigs around him were duped.

Tenet won’t go quietly, and in classic Washington fashion, the story of what Bush knew and when he knew it will leak out a little at a time, with a drip-drip that damages American credibility abroad even if Bush escapes political damage here at home.

"If we can be deceived about this," said Short, "what can we not be deceived about?"

Why did Bush order an end to the threats to Syria? The answer is obvious. He is not prepared to carry them out.

al-Qaeda and its allies, not Tommy Franks, now decide the time and place of attack in the War on Terror.
“There is no telling how far a man can go, as long as he is willing to let someone else get the credit,” read a plaque Ronald Reagan kept in his desk