Wednesday, February 01, 2006

State of the Union parallel universe

I admit that I didn't watch the State of the Union. I seldom do, and not only with this president. They seem to me as exercises in applause punctuated by a few wildly general promises that may or may not ever have any substance to them. On the rare occasion we get a classic such as "the internets." But for the most part they're like campaign speeches at pep rallies. My suggestion is the addition of a mass kissing of the babies after the ceremonies.

But, of course, who can avoid the remark that "America is addicted to oil"? And who. among. us. denies this (since, say, the 1960s)? The Earth is in the balance and all that.

Renewable energy strategy? This from a president drenched in oil who has resisted alternative energy research and has built a foreign policy around the addiction?

Were we perhaps beginning to channel an alternative universe in which 2000 turned out differently?

2 comments:

barba de chiva said...

Renewable energy is only a teeny-tiny part of it. The rest--and I only listened to what parts NPR woke me with this morning, before I stumbled from the bed to turn the damned thing off--is about stuff like "clean-burning coal." Clean-burning, indeed. Purifies the blood right on out of it.

More importantly (as Kunstler has prob'ly already pointed out), he's not at all talking about our addiction to energy. Just our addiction to oil.

He should have just said: methadone, baby.

troutsky said...

Actually, he said nuclear, and he said it right.So there won't be endless blogging about the proper pronunciation.He basically said, I now realize it is getting to expensive (China ,India),I now realize it is killing us (glaciers)and you can look forward to fifty years of uninterrupted global chaos as we slowly try to change the direction of a runaway train.But I will be gone so good luck, chumps.