SOTU Correction – Moon of Alabama

February 2, 2006

SOTU Correction

Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. (Applause.) By applying the talent and technology of America, this country can dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past. (Applause.)
President Bush Delivers State of the Union Address,
White House, January 31, 2006

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Diplomatically, Mr. Bush’s ambitious call for the replacement of 75 percent of the United States’ Mideast oil imports with ethanol and other energy sources by 2025 upset Saudi Arabia, the main American oil supplier in the Persian Gulf. In an interview on Wednesday, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said he would have to ask Mr. Bush’s office "what he exactly meant by that."
Bush’s Goals on Energy Quickly Find Obstacles,
NYT, February 1, 2006

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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.
Administration backs off Bush’s vow to reduce Mideast oil imports,
Knight Ridder, February 01, 2006

Posted by b on February 2, 2006 at 07:11 UTC | Permalink

Comments

i was watching the bbc news hr tonight and they had a clip of bush from the soyu (which i hadn’t watched) and he was expounding about making fuel from the grass on his ranch!!!! i was floored. the they bring on some ‘expert’ (plant) who kind of weasels around bushes statement , talking about new forms of energy, and of course it includes power plants , but they don’t really focus on that, and something about replacing gas w/ethanol from this grass, and i’m almost spitting up my whiskey! then, get this, the announcer asks the ‘expert’ about the car companies and if the’re w/the program and he says something about how the car companies just weren’t pulling their weight on this new developement, as if bush didn’t deregulate and turn back the clock on clintons policies to require a mandatory % of alternate fuel source autos. total fabrication//fantasyland!!

Posted by: annie | Feb 2 2006 8:54 utc | 1

Asked why the president used the words “the Middle East” when he didn’t really mean them, one administration official said in rather a scornful tone, “When the President uses a word, it means just what he chooses it to mean — neither more nor less.”

Posted by: DM | Feb 2 2006 9:11 utc | 2

“When the President uses a word, it means just what he chooses it to mean — neither more nor less.”
Like something straight out of “malice in plunderland”. Madness sheer utter madness.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 2 2006 9:26 utc | 3

Maybe he (W) has that secret (like Arafat used to do) decoder ring on, like when he mentioned Dred Scott in the debates. Speaking in a way “that every american out there listening to the speech understands” which is a subliminal and exceptionalist nod to the racist dragline of whatever popular base the guy has left — seeing as it is , that he has blown the promised (also subliminal) Iraqi oil windfall.

Posted by: anna missed | Feb 2 2006 9:58 utc | 4

@roland
I like the ideal of 1920s liberal isolationism, I Personally prefer real democracy and mutual cooperation to isolationism, America should co-operate with other “peace-loving nations” accept for the fact that we have never ever been peace-loving.
The neocon-victs believe American isolationism would leave humanity defenceless in its hour of need, at least that’s the ruse. Reminds me of the Desmond Tutu quote, “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
I did a paper in my anthro class once, that argued that always, with out fail, the vanguard in every inter- and intra-action with the “other” were missionaries, followed by the overt military siege. Externalization of the hierarchy. Perhaps, as with the ideals of Sir Karl Popper’s, The Open Society and Its Enemies [1945],–not to be confused with George Soros globalist bullshit– is more toward what I’d like to see. That and synthesis of the wonderful philosophy resources of John Rawls. Alas, to dream. What thinkst?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 2 2006 10:05 utc | 5

Opps, that was for the ot thread..sorry

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 2 2006 10:13 utc | 6

SOTU Translation:
In a system of two parties, two chambers, and two elected branches, there will always be differences and debate.
But since we own both sides, sit down and shut up all you uppity Dems. We know you are Most Comfortable in your assigned role of being klepto lite.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 2 2006 10:19 utc | 7

A Mis-statement of the Union Address
by Stephen Zunes

Posted by: manonfyre | Feb 2 2006 10:45 utc | 8

@anna missed, that is the most fucked up thing i have read lately, I was not aware of Dred Scott. Now, after reading that the whole “human/animal hybred” thing makes sense. He’s talkng about non-whites. More code talk? No?

Posted by: Anonymous | Feb 2 2006 11:14 utc | 9

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 2 2006 11:15 utc | 10

d r i f t g l a s s
on the latest lie (wait a minute, that was Tuesday).

But now, not 24 hours after Dear Leader Speaks Hour is over, he’s busted slipping the Truth a double-shot of Rohypnol and trying to rip her panties off while she’s passed out.

Posted by: beq | Feb 2 2006 13:11 utc | 11

Surely no one believed a word he said to begin with, did they?
Here’s the article that apparently sparked his ‘interest,’ just before the speech, in human-animal hybrids. I was wondering where he had come up with that idea to begin with and why it ended up so importantly in a SOTU message.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0125_050125_chimeras.html

Posted by: Ensley | Feb 2 2006 13:50 utc | 12

@ Ensley, from your link:
“It would deny that there is something distinctive and valuable about human beings that ought to be honored and protected,” said Cohen, who is also the senior research fellow at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics in Washington, D.C.
I don’t know. If they could produce a human with the kindness inherent in animals, I’m all for it.

Posted by: beq | Feb 2 2006 14:54 utc | 13

Steph Flanders (grand daughter of that illustrious troublemaker Claud Cockburn) did a piece on the SOTU last night for BBC Newsnight (click the link on the rh side where it says “Latest programme available for 24 hours after broadcast”), and specifically mentioned the “reducing by 75% from the ME” thing.
She pointed out that only 19% of US oil imports come from the ME (most of the black stuff the US impports comes from Canuckstan and the Socialist Republics of Latin America). So a 75% cut in oil from the ME is equivalent to 1.6m b/d, rather than a 75% cut in total US oil imports, which would be 7m b/d.
Weasel numbers.

Posted by: Dismal Science | Feb 2 2006 15:43 utc | 14

(wrote this before reading Dismal S just above who makes a similar point)
US sheeples associate the war in Iraq with energy dependence. In that they are not mistaken, at heart.
Their take on it is Victorian and mechanisitic: if we could stop those imports, they think, there would be no need to send soldiers to their death there. They don’t know, forget, or prefer to ignore that the first suppliers of oil to the US are the US itself, Canada, Mexico – and abroad Venezuela and Nigeria.
They are encouraged to think that if the US would stop buying ME oil (about 15 % from Saudi? – not sure that is right) the world would stabilise, and all would be right in the Church and BBQ yard.
See Michael Moore!
A few hydrogen cells, super new technology, less waste and new initiatives to grow corn or sugar to make petrol will see them right.
There’s always Alaska…
US presidents have always mouthed energy independence, in complete contradiction with their foreign policy from at least 1945. Independence, to them, means taking over control, and continuing to sell cars, etc. And more. The more is the problem.

Posted by: Noisette | Feb 2 2006 18:18 utc | 15

Noisette, The way you put it, your sheeple are willing to kill for oil. Some of them are, I suspect, but the real perps in the kill-for-oil – excuse me, it is better stated as kill-for-power – are our select group of movers/shakers at the top, who don’t care what the sheeple are or are not willing to do.
On “corn or sugar to make petrol…” not sure how you meant that to be read, but lets not forget that it takes more (oil) energy to produce alcohol from plants than is gained from the alcohol produced. And a similar point can be made about hydrogen. All the talk about bio-energy is pretty much bullshit; would we expect anything else from clusterfuck and his gang of reptiles?
Just trying to clarify…

Posted by: rapt | Feb 2 2006 20:20 utc | 16

@rapt – but lets not forget that it takes more (oil) energy to produce alcohol from plants than is gained from the alcohol produced. And a similar point can be made about hydrogen.
For ethanol that depends on weather, fertility of the earth you are planting in, fuits used etc. It may be reasonable energy wise in Brasilia but may not be reasonable in Island.
For hydrogen the case is similar. It depends on how you make hydrogen and where. The most neutral way is to use the sun, wind and waves to make hydrogen. The best place to make it would probably be in the Sahara, but that gives a transport problem.
I am sure one could find technolgy and reasonable places to make and deliver hydrogen to where it is needed if some real mass research would be done. But Bush just cut the research personal for alternative fuels by 15%. That is probably not the way to do it.

Posted by: b | Feb 2 2006 20:34 utc | 17

I haven’t read everything posted, but one word that Bush said has great potential. SWITCHGRASS. Canada is moving forward with this prairie grass and many uses for it can be found. Some plants are doing experiments combining switchgrass and coal for biomass firing of power plants is taking place. In fact a person we work with is proposing an experimental energy plant in our area. Also, the energy content is high and it can directly replace oil per Gross Joule (GJ) in energy content.
It can also be pelletized and burned in pellet stoves like wood pellets or corn and produces 30% less emissions. The great thing about switchgrass is it wouldn’t be a replacement crop but could be grown on fallow land with very little fertilizer, grows without replanting for nine years and can be harvested as hay bales.
This is the future and can be a boon to farmers without taking productive land off line. Please look this up. And, I will confer with an extension agent friend of mine and write a short article for MOA in the future on “switchgrass.”

Posted by: jdp | Feb 2 2006 22:32 utc | 18

This is the big one folks!
Downing Street Memo II?
Blair-Bush deal before Iraq war revealed in secret memo

“We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq.” A newly released memo of a meeting of George W. Bush and Tony Blair reveals a determination to invade Iraq regardless of a second UN resolution or evidence of a weapons program. UK’s Channel 4 News claims to have seen the memo, which is dated 31 January 2003 (two months before the invasion), and aired a report this evening. Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of “flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours”. Mr Bush added: “If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]”. More discussion here, here, here, and here.

More…
Here is the direct link for the Channel 4 news report. THIS IS MUST SEE!!!!
Terror attack! in 4, 3, 2, …

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 3 2006 11:02 utc | 19

“I haven’t read everything posted, but one word that Bush said has great potential. SWITCHGRASS.
Posted by: jdp | Feb 2, 2006 5:32:03 PM | #
But…But…Won’t SWITCHGRASS lead to HEMP?

Posted by: pb | Feb 4 2006 19:05 utc | 20

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