US SOTU  

Dave Roberts at GristMill has been blogging at a great rate about our glorious emperor's speech yesterday and his little segment on the perils of dependence on foreign oil and the need to look at alternatives (while studiously ignoring the perils of global warming and side effects like hurricane Katrina). I thought this little segment borrowed from ThinkProgress shows that people may be reading more into this than might be justified - there has been boilerplate along these lines in his speeches for quite some time - though so far he has just concentrated on invading some oil producers and trying to intimidate others. Great strategy.

Apparently he talked about cutting oil imports from the middle east by 75% by 2025, but after some later clarifications it appears these were "just numbers".

According to speech excerpts released by the White House, tonight President Bush will take the bold stand that America needs to be less dependent on foreign oil:

America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology.

Sound familiar?

2002: "This Congress must act to encourage conservation, promote technology, build infrastructure, and it must act to increase energy production at home so America is less dependent on foreign oil."

2003: "Our third goal is to promote energy independence for our country, while dramatically improving the environment. … [We should be] much less dependent on foreign sources of energy."

2004: "I urge you to pass legislation to modernize our electricity system, promote conservation, and make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy."

2005: "I urge Congress to pass legislation that makes America more secure and less dependent on foreign energy."

Meanwhile, our dependence on foreign oil has increased from 58 percent in 2000 to 66 percent today. If America is addicted to oil, George W. Bush is our dealer.

The Permian Basin POTUS, beating Punxsutawney Phil to the punch by a little more than 24 hours, stuck his head out in public last night, saw the threatening shadow of GOP defeat this fall, and proclaimed something that we already know: We're "addicted to oil."

The dreaded "peak oil" theory, ignored by most of the GOP until now, finally rated a peek by the Pennsylvania Avenue groundhog.

But this one's a bad movie: When we woke up this morning, George W. Bush was still president. Talk about an endless loop: Bush, the failed "oilman" who is the son of a rich guy who himself dabbled in oil, wouldn't be the U.S. president if we weren't addicted to oil, and his family's pals in the oil bidness hadn't propped him up with their outrageous profits. And all he was doing in his State of the Union address was mouthing what one of his mentors, billionaire Richard Rainwater, has been saying recently.

Bush's handlers are just trying to distract us, but the doomsaying is real. First, though, here's the part of Bush's speech I really liked, his rap about how "America has become a more hopeful nation." What a laugh. It was a fearmongering speech, but with the subject changed from Iraq and terrorists to oil. With typical push and pull, Bush's handlers sought to soothe us and scare us.