Yeah, I was pretty sure he didn't really mean it. Our environmental president had to make some noise Tuesday night that sounded like he gave a rat's ass about America's addiction to oil, foreign oil that is. But just two days later we get the rest of the story. From Elisabeth Bumiller at the NYT, this: Bush's Goals on Energy Quickly Find Obstacles. The Saudis got mad and started pouting, Congress got to nit-picking, and scientists just laughed. The key word in the now-famous SOTU energy remarks was "foreign." As Ms. Bumiller states in the article:
Mr. Bush, like other modern presidents, has talked since the earliest days of his administration about weaning the United States off oil, but mostly by supporting an increase in domestic production. On Wednesday afternoon, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Rush Limbaugh's radio program that the administration would continue to push to open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
I toldya so, didn't I? But anyone with half a brain knew that was going to be the plan. But now, remember all that new technology for renewable energy The Man talked about Tuesday night? Still from Bumiller's article:
The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.
A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.
The budget for the laboratory, which is just west of Denver, was cut by nearly 15 percent, to $174 million from $202 million, requiring the layoff of about 40 staff members out of a total of 930, said a spokesman, George Douglas. The cut is for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1.
Are you rolling on the floor laughing yet? Did you ever believe the guy had any intention of decreasing our dependence on oil, foreign or otherwise? The only way to immediately do something about our oil jones would be to mandate much better fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, improve mass transit both locally and nationally, and to really encourage conservation in government and corporate use of oil, as well as asking the same of private citizens. In other words, conservation. Another big help would be to increase gasoline taxes, which would by inself encourage conservation.
One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.
Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands." The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.
Presidential adviser Dan Bartlett made a similar point in a briefing before the speech. "I think one of the biggest concerns the American people have is oil coming from the Middle East. It is a very volatile region," he said. (Emphasis added.)
Umm hmmm. Just more terrorist mongering, really. Telling his dumbo audience that he's gonna do something so we won't have to git our oil from that scary volatile Middle East no more. Gonna git us some red-blooded Amurcan oil and use some good clean Amurcan nukular power. And in the end, really, he had no idea whatsoever what in hell he was saying anyway.
I'll take those margaritas now, the ones I didn't have on Tuesday night.
