Basically, he said:

(1) Don't criticize the war on terror, if you do so, you are not a patriot.

This isn't that original, though, see this - "voice or no voic, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leanders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denouce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger, it works the same in any country." Herman Goering, 1945.

(2) Bush also said he has the power to spy without a warrant, and smiled at the new members of the Supreme Court which should rule nicely in his favor now. In the State of the Union, he argues that Article 2 gives him the power to do whatever he wants to "protect the American people." All dictators have this power, but not elected presidents in a constitutional form of government. What he forgets is that the Constitution is a limitation on government power, not a granting of it.

(3) Bush also talked to the Iranian people, just like he talked to the Iraqis in the 2003 state of the union address before attacking Iraq.

(4) Those of you that like him do so bc he can pick a course and stay on it. This makes him a hard head, not someone to admire. He does pick a course of action and sticks with it, even when his own Pentagon says the military is overstretched, even after he dawned his flight suit and told us "mission accomplished," even when those at the Fed Reserve say the massive twin deficits can't be sustained, he keeps going and going, in the name of God, he keeps going. You admire this?

(5) You all think Bush said the right things about energy? What did he say but the obvious that we are addicted to oil. BFD. Are our expectations of our leaders so low that we pat someone on the back for telling us what we already know, that we drive too much, buy too much crap, have our thermostats set too high? Come on. Tell us something we don't know. Tell us how we are going to get out of this mess. How many nuclear plants is he going to build and where? How many coal liquefication plants will he build and where? When will they change the CAFTA standards or at least allow us to import European cars that get lots better mileage than our cars. Bush said nothing about energy. There is no plan. If they aren't even rebuilding New Orleans yet, you think they are going to do anything about transitioning from oil? Get real. This was all meaningless hyperbole.

His dad also said that to the Kurds before abandoning them to Hussein's made -in-the-USA poison gas.

So currently the oil imports from the Middle East are about 4 mbd. So a 75% reduction would be a 3 million barrels per day reduction by 2025. So in about 20 years the US is planning to replace 15% of it's oil consumption, so like 0.75% a year.

I would think the word he should have been looking for was 'reduce' not 'replace' and another word I would have expected was 'conservation'.

Why not speak directly to the American people (like he did to the Iranians) and tell them to conserve. Instead he told them that "we are on the threshold of incredible advances", given the people the belief that there is no need for them to do anything about it, it will be solved for them. He didn't tell them to change their lifestyles, but that he would replace part of their oil addiction with some other drug.


I would also have replaced the 'compete' with 'cooperate'. We face global issues, we should be cooperating, we don't have time to compete. Why does it always have to be about winning?