I think I was lucky to come of age in a place and time - the American South in the 1960s and '70s - when the machine hadn't completely taken over life. The natural world was still the world and machines - TV telephone cars - were still more or less ancillary and computers were unheard of in everyday life.

I am a huge supporter for cash for caulkers - which allows people to make improvement for energy efficient in their homes. We should do the same for Americans purchasing appliances and computers and for that matter new air-conditioner and heating units.

China has legally purchased high performance computers advanced machine tools and semiconductor-manufacturing equipment from several American companies.

If anything characterizes the cultural life of the seventies in America it is an insistence on preventing failures of communication.

The eventual place the American army should take on the western front was to a large extent influenced by the vital question of communication and supply.

On the other hand the American public possesses a great resilience and strength and good risk communication strategies can tap into and even amplify those assets.

Power in America today is control of the means of communication.

To succeed you will soon learn as I did the importance of a solid foundation in the basics of education - literacy both verbal and numerical and communication skills.

The Bush-Cheney administration had betrayed some basic American values. So there was hunger for change.

Obama has no power to change American policy because there are people who specialize in drawing these policies which have been and still are hostile towards Islam.

I was advised by an American agent when I was about 19 to change my surname.

One-third of Americans have already been forced to change their lifestyle because their disposable income is gone. A guy can't go to the corner bar after a rough day at work to have a beer that's gone to oil!

I don't think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person.

President Obama's version of America is a divided one - pitting us against each other based on our income level gender and social status. His policies have failed! We are not better off than we were 4 years ago and no rhetoric bumper sticker or campaign ad can change that.

I don't think the Palestinian people or Afghan children or some other things I'm concerned about are at the top of other people's agendas - not right now when America is going through such a recession and people are suffering across the board financially. But I think all that will change.

Despite the fact that in America we incarcerate more juveniles for life terms than in any other country in the world the truth is that the vast majority of youth offenders will one day be released. The question is simple and stark. Do we want to help them change or do we want to help them become even more violent and dangerous?

Few expected very much of Franklin Roosevelt on Inauguration Day in 1933. Like Barack Obama seventy-six years later he was succeeding a failed Republican president and Americans had voted for change. What that change might be Roosevelt never clearly said probably because he himself didn't know.