The State of The Union...
Re; president Bush's speech the other night.

I give him high marks for once again embarrasing democrats, although, truth to tell, this is not all that difficult. Democrats do a better job of inserting ye old foot in ye old pie hole on their own than any republican could ever hope to do. Just remember that little Standing-O the dimwits gave themselves for blocking "Social Security Reform" --- you'll be seeing a lot of that footage in the near future. Paging Karl Rove...

There was an interesting Presidential morsel dropped during the speech that has not gone unnoticed --- the President's soon-to-be-famous "America-is-addicted-to-foreign-oil" blurb is already leaving skidmarks.

Apparently, the Saudis are quite pissed over that remark. It would seem to indicate that their primary customer (and defender) will be feverishly working to remove itself from the Saudi Oil Kingdom teat. And the Saudis, unlike most other Islamics, know that when Americans are challenged to do something, they usually achieve it (see; Atomic bomb, Cold War, Space Race, etc). What this forecasts for the future of the Saudi Kingdom is easy to divine: they're cooked if we succeed. No more Kingdom, no more Princes in the thousands, no more money to prop up a regime that is, at it's core, rotten. Oil prices on international markets fell the very next day.

Now energy independance is all well and fine. It's long overdue, if you ask me. But, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. The only feasible option at the moment is nuclear power, and that faces an uphill battle with the Mother-Gaia-latte-sipping-tie-died crowd. Of course, since they no longer have their hands on the levers of power, this is merely a lot of noise being made to soothe their own savage breasts. Sort of like a nosebleed --- it's annoying, it might even be inconvenient, but after a while, it stops. And then you're onto the next thing.

I'm all for a Presidential initiative challenging American science and industry to overcome what is a seemingly insurmountable problem. Now I expect that this Presidential Prod is more than window dressing and that Mr. Bush steps up to the podium every Goddamned Day to continue to pound away at the issue.