I thought about watching the State of the Union address last night but I was too tired. So I had a little nightcap and off to bed I went.
This morning as I listened to NPR, they broke it all down for me and as I listened I became perturbed. It seems to me that listening to the speech is kind of like buying an ice cream bar from the 7-11. It looks good. The packaging is intact. You take the ice cream out of the wrapper and the chocolate seems to be fresh. But then you bite into it and you realize the ice cream is stale.
So much of what the President said seemed palatable, but then as you dig into it, you find that it's not quite what it seems.
Only a fifth of our petroleum imports come from the Middle East. A great percentage comes from crazy places like.... Canada!
The biggest cutback in petrol usage in the last few decades came not from using something different but from using less oil. It was a result in improvements to automobiles. It was a technological improvement, not a change in fuel.
And don't ask me about the whole war thing. Or whether we could have stopped 9/11 by spying on our neighbors.
And the budget numbers GW crunched that sound so positive? Didn't include expenditures for the war or aid for Katrina victims.
Stale ice cream. The only reason you eat it is because there's nothing else available.
3 comments:
Interesting blog. When Kennedy was elected President, he was asked by congressional committee whether he would take his orders from them or from the Vatican. He replied that he is the President, he takes orders from the people. Even if he personally didn't like it. He compared himself to a soldier who does things he abhors because it is his duty to do so. When he was dead, and in his coffin on a gun carriage, I believe it was Oral Roberts (though it could have been Pat Robertson...a spotlight hog even back then!) who said to a reporter in "The Rise of the Religious Right in America" (An ABC documentary) that he and dozens of his like minded religious leaders lined the streets with bottles of holy water, fully expecting that after the end of the ride, the coffin would open, and the anti-christ would rise up, and they would be ready for him!
Makes some of the conspiracy theories seem plausible!!!! Grin!
Politics and religion don't mix. As your blog about Robertson below illustrates, just as one bad apple can ruin the barrel, one politician can ruin a whole barrel of otherwise wholesome preachers. My personal belief is that if you want religious leaders in charge of your government, go to Iran where you belong. But, I don't expect others to share that belief.
Just my 2 cents worth....I was blog surfing and came across yours entirely by accident. I am glad I did since you seem to be both entertaining and opinionated....grin! I will probably drop back in every few weeks or so.
Cheers.
Yeah, I listened to most of the SOTU address. I was mostly unimpressed, except for his joke about he and President Clinton being two of his father's favorite people . . .
REAL oil-consumption reform would include immediately enacting tougher fuel-efficiency standards in vehicles (technology that already exists TODAY) and increasing gasoline taxes, even incrementally over a period of several years. Creating new technology that may be employed in 20 years is not visionary - it is just busywork that makes for nice headlines in USA Today.
Oh daughter of mine! The ice cream at our house is never allowed to get stale!
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