Already the backpedaling begins. Not even a day after we were treated to the incredible spectacle of George Oilwell (to borrow a cognomen from someone--regrettably, I forget who--at Big Orange) standing up in front of God and Congress and everybody, promisin' to kick that crude oil habit, and even as the preznit goes on his post-SOTU speaking tour trying to drum up support for the two or three things he might have proposed the other night, a couple of his flacks are "reinterpreting" his message:
WASHINGTON - 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.What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.
But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's where the greatest oil supplies are.
Don't you just wonder which of the oil execs called which White House staffer and threatened what sort of political and/or bodily harm if Georgie didn't back off of anything that might threaten their obscenely bloated profit margins? Somebody must not have gotten their regular weekly blowjob...
Moreover, it's more than a little bit dismaying that Bush's energy secretary and his leading economic adviser apparently don't know that Middle Eastern oil accounts for no more than one-fifth of the U.S. domestic consumption. We get most of our oil these days from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and, if I remember correctly, Nigeria. Last time I checked, none of those places was in the Middle East. Of course, I suppose the Bushoviki could be making contingency plans in case their Dear Leader pisses off Hugo Chavez again and he decides to cut off the spigots...
Isn't this just typical of the Bush misadministration? First, announce some farrago of half-baked ideas with no clear objective in sight (or means of achieving same if it could be found). Then, once one of the high and mighty corporate masters and/or campaign contributors bitches about it, water it down even further--or else pretend like the preznit never actually said it. I still can't believe the man had the gall to berate Congress for not passing his Social Security reform rapine and pillage last year. He had to know that proposal was dead on arrival, and he and his people more or less gave up on it once it became obvious even to them that it was deader than Queen Anne. If he wanted it so fucking bad, he should have fought harder for it, used up some of that "political capital" he was forever bragging about this time last year.
Guess maybe the Boy Who Would Be King should get a few of his flacks out there and start backing off of that statement, too, eh?
Well, when you really don't know what's going on in the world around you, it's easy to fuck up in ginormous ways. I wonder if he even knows that his staff is cleaning up after him right now?
On a side note, tag, you're it.
Posted by: Incertus | Thursday, 02 February 2006 at 09:27
We only get about 15% of our oil from the Middle East. Canada, Mexico, and South America are our major foreign suppliers.
His decrease is doable with a gradual increase in CAFE standards for vehicles of about 25% over the time period, say 5 miles per gallon.
Smoke and mirrors.
Posted by: Bryan | Thursday, 02 February 2006 at 16:21