State of the Union: No Accountability

One of the things that drives me absolutely nuts about the State of the Union addresses by any President are the brightlines established for the pie in the sky policy goals- they’re always well beyond the President’s term and stewardship over the policy in office:

Tonight, I ask Congress to join me in pursuing a great goal. Let us build on the work we’ve done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next 10 years. (Applause.) When we do that we will have cut our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.

To reach this goal, we must increase the supply of alternative fuels, by setting a mandatory fuels standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017 — and that is nearly five times the current target. (Applause.) At the same time, we need to reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars the way we did for light trucks — and conserve up to 8.5 billion more gallons of gasoline by 2017.

2017?

Come on, Mr. President. You have less than two years as President between now and 2017 and can make no gaurantees about what policy direction your successor will take. We could have two more Presidents between now and 2017.
2017 is very convienient, because by 2017, the 2007 State of the Union will long be forgotten and there will be no relevent accountability for George W. Bush. If the President was really serious about energy policy, or anything else in his speech from last night, his brightline would have set goals with target dates on or before January 21, 2009.

3 comments on “State of the Union: No Accountability”

It just goes to show that this president isn’t seriously looking at alternative or renewable energy. He says he is, but then in reality he is just like the politicians that had used it as a talking point 7+ years ago.

Bush is still giving us the same old same old. It scares me to death every time he plays the “terror card”. It usually means we lose BIG.

“Our success in this war is often measured by the things that did not happen. We cannot know the full extent of the attacks that we and our allies have prevented, but here is some of what we do know: We stopped an al Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We broke up a Southeast Asian terror cell grooming operatives for attacks inside the United States. We uncovered an al Qaeda cell developing anthrax to be used in attacks against America. And just last August, British authorities uncovered a plot to blow up passenger planes bound for America over the Atlantic Ocean. For each life saved, we owe a debt of gratitude to the brave public servants who devote their lives to finding the terrorists and stopping them”. (Applause.)

The administration obviously lacks credibility on certain issues, so it is up to each American to inform themselves:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3056626.stm

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/special/v-pfriendly/story/203698p-175780c.html

http://mediamatters.org/items/200602090004

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=282

I would love to take this to a statistician to find the odds of this happening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKvkhe3rqtc

Especially after what happened on 9/11.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj5IRrH1A8Y