There were a number of "What the #$%@#$%?" moments in President Bush's State of the Union speech this week.
Firstly, we have the announcement - straight out of left field - that Bush seeks to eliminate America's dependence on Middle Eastern oil. This is bizarre, because virtually every part of Bush's business and political career has been defined by cozy relationships with oil companies.
Recall that in 2003, Congress's investigatory arm
declared that an energy task force, led by Vice President Cheney, relied for outside advise primarily on "petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, electricity industry representatives and lobbyists," while seeking limited input from academic experts, environmentalists and policy groups. Even after 9/11, Bush was determined to tie America's future to fossil fuels.
An acquaintance of mine who works in the Pentagon and is privy to much of the inner workings of the administration nevertheless reported that this announcement took most of Washington by surprise. To me, the lack of consultation and planning that occurred indicates that Bush is not sincere about this commitment -- but remember that lack of consultation and planning turned out to be the signature of an impending massive invasion of Iraq.
Despite being involved with it his entire life, Bush has a history of being confused about foreign oil:
I've been talking to Vicente Fox, the new president of Mexico... I
know him... to have gas and oil sent to U.S.... so we'll not depend on foreign oil. - Presidential debate, Oct. 3, 2000
The question remains: is Bush serious about eliminating dependence Middle Eastern oil, or is this merely election-year rhetoric? My guess is that this will go into the same bucket of empty promises as "I'm a uniter, not a divider"; "I want to be known as the 'education' president'"; and "I'm a fiscal conservative."
Much more bizarre, however, was when Bush waded into the field of science:
Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research... creating human-animal hybrids...
Where did
that come from? Perhaps, in a semi-conscious state after
choking on another pretzel, Bush watched
The Island of Dr. Moreau and woke up believing it was the Discovery Channel? Pray he doesn't start watching the Sci-Fi channel, which earlier this year featured a truly terrible/hilarious movie:
When he began fusing human and shark DNA, his colleagues laughed at him. Now his creation is taking his revenge, they're not laughing any more.
So if Bush had been watching
that movie we might have been treated to something like this in the State of the Union address:
We have recently learned that Iran has sought to reconstitute its program of cross-breeding sharks with terrorists and arming them with weapons of mass destruction.
If that sounds too ludicrous even for a bad Hollywood movie, think again:
Drs. Nathan and Marla Collins are shark experts working on a top-secret government project: To protect our shorelines by creating controlled shark patrols. When their project is sabotaged, the mutant great white sharks are released into American waterways. Out among the general population the smartest of the sharks, Red Dog, carries a neutron bomb on a mission to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.
Z-grade movies aside, Bush's desire to thwart valid, scientifically sound medical research reveals he is wading well out of his intellectual depth. An acquaintance of mine wrote an opinion on this subject that was so perfect I shan't try to top it:
Transgenic pigs/goats/cows/whatever have the possibility of creating entirely new classes of drugs that are highly targeted and specific. Chimeric animal studies are beginning to provide fruitful basic research on all sorts of physiological systems.
The Bush administration's desire to halt work in these areas is akin to their desire to quash stem cell research, reinstate school prayer, push intelligent design, and pretend global warming isn't a result of human activities - it's all driven by emotional (religious) and political ($$$) concerns.
I'm coming to believe more and more that the current geopolitical situation is shaping up more along the lines of the Reformation (with a pan-religious break between fundamentalists and 'protestants'[realists]) than the clash of civilizations crap we're being fed.
We have a status quo driven administration that seeks to return the U.S. to past levels of glory through new conquests and overt demonstrations of power and control instead of forging new visions and goals suited to the new world order.
With the bulk of the populace reacting childishly to fear, uncertainty, and doubt, it's no wonder that the current administration won't treat the people of the U.S. as adults by being bold in their ideas and complex in their execution: it would erode their base.
It seems that the only thing left for the U.S. to do now to complete this arc is to invade the Falklands.
