president

SOTU in situ

Listening to W's latest state of the union makes me wistful for the days when I could respect the residents of the White House:

No gems this year like last year's call to oppose human-animal hybrids.

He did get nu-cu-lar in there a couple of times, though. I could have had some fun with State of the Union Bingo from Drinking Liberally, but I'm not drinking tonight.

Not a single word about that little situation down on the Gulf Coast. You think the man who two years ago thought steroid-use in sports was a national crises could spend a few minutes on the recovery effort. Did he forget? Or maybe if he doesn't mention it, it doesn't exist…

People have given Bush some credit for actually mentioning climate change, and even proposing an increase in fuel efficiency standards. But take a closer look at what is being proposed:

Environmentalists noted that the proposal could lead to an average fuel economy of 34 miles per gallon in vehicles by 2017, but it would not require the industry to increase the fuel economy of their new cars.

Huh? My car, a non-hybrid from 2001, gets better mileage than that! So it's really not much of a plan at all. I guess I shouldn't have expected much. There was also no mention of the increasingly popular idea of CO2 costs within products and processes. For cars, that could be adding the cost of fuel inefficiency into the sale price (as opposed to adding the cost to the fuel itself). In fairness, having such a proposal in the speech would have meant he would have to explain it…